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THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI BULLETIN 

VOLUME; 24, NUMBER 15 


University of Missouri Bulletins Numbers 19, 20 and 21 not issued under the Post Office mailing permit 


JOURNALISM SERIES, No. 28 

Robert S. Mann, Editor 


NEWS AND THE NEWSPAPER 


From Addresses by Editors, Writers and Readers 
at the Fourteenth Annual Journalism Week 


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ISSUED THREE) TIMES MONTHLY; ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MAT¬ 
TER AT THE POSTOFFICE AT COLUMBIA, MISSOURI.—2,500 

AUGUST 1, 1923. 










1 


THE UNIVERSITYOFMISSOURI BULLETIN 

volume; 24 , number 15 


m 

i 

JOURNALISM SERIES, No. 28 

Robert S. Mann, Editor 


NEWS AND THE NEWSPAPER 

From Addresses by Editors, Writers and Readers 
at THE Fourteenth Annual Journalism Week 

'y- L '" ' ■- " •“V ■ \ y ■ ■ 



ISSUED THREE TIMES MONTHLY; ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MAT¬ 
TER AT THE POSTOFFICE AT COLUMBIA, MISSOURI.—2,500 
SEPTEMBER, 1923. 












?[\! 4 - 7 £ 4 - 
yi 4-7 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

RECEIVED 

OCT 1 8 1923 


DOCUMENTS DIVISION 











CONTENTS 


Aeter Fifteen Years _ 5 

Resolutions Adopted by the Missouri Press Association _ 5 

What News to Print—The Pubeisher's View _ 8 

A New Type of Journalism, by Willis J. Abbot_ 8 

Devitalized Journalism, by Richard Lloyd Jones_ 13 

The New Journalism, by Frank P. Glass_^_20 

What News to Print—The Reader's View___24 

What the Lawyer Wants in the Newspaper, by Jesse W. Barrett 24 
What the Preacher Wants in the Newspaper, by Dr. Claudius B. 

Spencer _*_25 

What the Farmer Wants in the Newspaper, by Chester H. Gray_28 

The Newspaper and the Man in Office, by Charles U. Becker_32 

Some Negeected News Fieeds_ 34 

High School News, by A. L. Preston_34 

Some Local Features, by T. G. Thompson_35 

News in Other Lands _38 

Foreign News Services, by J. H. Furay-38 

An American Reporter in China, by Frank H. Hedges -_42 

Some Observations on Journalism in the Orient, by Oscar E. 
Riley - 46 

News in Our Capitaes_*_48 

Reporting a Legislature, by Asa Hutson-48 

The Washington Assignment, by J. Fred Essary-52 

The Making oe the Cartoon, by D. R. Fitzpatrick_60 

The Newspaper in the Smaee City-64 

The Editorial Content, by Edward Felgate-64 

The Make-Up of a Newspaper, by Edgar C. Nelson-66 

Shall the Newspaper Do Commercial Printing? by William South¬ 
ern, Jr. - 68 

























Advertising in the Smaee City_ 72 

The Personal Touch in Advertising, by R. E. Shannon-72 

Farmers’ Advertising, by D. C. Simons -78 

The Obligation of the Small-Town Publisher to His Advertisers, 
by Alfonso Johnson_80 

Women in Journalism _ 85 

Some Opportunities in Journalism for Women, by Miss Beatrix 

Winn _85 

Advertising as a Career for Women, by Miss Elizabeth Bickford 86 

The Writers oe Fiction - 89 

A Forward Glance at Fiction, by Miss Dorothy Scarborough-89 

The New Dialect Story, by Robert L. Ramsay-95 

Why Do Authors Write? by Miss Temple Bailey-99 

Novel Writing—Its Cause and Cure, by Jay William Hudson-101 

Reaching the Reading Public, by E. Haldeman-Julius-102 

Building an Editors’ Clubhouse, by E. S. Bronson_106 

The Journalism oe the Future_ 108 

Tendencies in American Journalism, by William B. Colver-108 

The Making of a Newspaper, by Louis Wiley-115 


The Press and Our Oriental Relations, by Poultney Bigelow 


121 


















After Fifteen Years 


The 1923 Journalism Week, held May 21 to 26 at the University of 
Missouri, came at the close of the fifteenth year of instruction at the 
University’s School of Journalism. It was the fourteenth annual Jour¬ 
nalism Week, the first one having been held near the close of the school’s 
second year. 

In many respects this year’s Journalism Week proved the most sat¬ 
isfactory of all that have been held. 

The closing feature of the week was the Made-in-Manchuria Ban¬ 
quet, presented by the School of Journalism in co-operation with the 
South Manchuria Railway. Food, decorations and souvenirs for the ban¬ 
quet were sent from Manchuria by the railway company, which is one of 
the outstanding business organizations of the Orient. The company oper¬ 
ates a railroad line through Chosen (Korea) and the south half of Man¬ 
churia, with American-built coaches, pullmans and dining cars. In addi¬ 
tion it conducts hotels and cafes along its lines, engages in coastwise ship 
ping, mining and other industries, maintains agricultural experiment sta¬ 
tions, and provides schools, hospitals and summer camps for its employes 
and their families. 

The Made-in-Manchuria Banquet was also notable as being the oc¬ 
casion for the first public address at the University of Missouri by Dr. 
Stratton D. Brooks, the new president of the University. 

This bulletin includes the major portions of all the addresses de¬ 
livered during the week, except a very few which unfortunately could not 
be made available for publication. Acknowledgment is here made of the 
efforts of Ben Leader, a student in the School of Journalism, who gath¬ 
ered the material for this bulletin, taking down many of the speeches in 
shorthand when no prepared copy was available. 

As usual, the week included conventions of two state organizations, 
the Missouri Press Association and the Missouri Writers Guild. Resolu¬ 
tions adopted by the Missouri Press Association follow. 


Resolutions Adopted by the Missouri Press Association 

at Columbia, Mo., May 25, 1923. 

Without reservation the Missouri Press Association extends hearty 
congratulations and best wishes to the Missouri School of Journalism and 
rejoices in being able to meet at Columbia on this, the fourteenth annual 
Journalism Week. We take to ourselves a part of the honors and glory 
because our association has always supported the School of Journalism 
and always rejoices in its success. 

We are especially pleased that the School of Journalism is able to 


6 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


offer to students from Missouri and other states and countries the advan¬ 
tages of such a complete newspaper laboratory, a laboratory which ex¬ 
tends its benefits and usefulness wherever the graduates of this school, 
find their field of labor and offers a means whereby all students may 
obtain at first hand practical and effective newspaper training. 

We extend our cordial welcome to the president-elect of the Univer¬ 
sity of Missouri, Dr. Stratton D. Brooks, and pledge to him the same 
hearty support we have always given to his predecessors and that we will 
use every effort to promote the cause of higher education. 

We are particularly gratified to note the steady advancement of the 
country weeklies and the smaller daily papers of Missouri, both as to 
appearance and in the more thorough covering of the news and editorial 
fields of the communities which they serve, and also in the fact that most 
of them have adopted business methods which have caused their owners 
to maintain that added respect given to the citizen with a paying property 
and a sound financial standing in any community. Reflecting this evidence 
of material success of its members, we are pleased that the Missouri Press 
Association has now been placed on a firm business basis, with a paid sec¬ 
retary constantly working for the lengthening of the membership list and 
the strengthening of the service which our association is rendering its 
members. We commend Secretary Hubbard for the good work which 
he has been doing in the way of establishing a Missouri Guaranteed List; 
in the gathering of valuable facts and figures; in organization activity; 
and in the securing of a standardized measurement and uniform rate for 
the payment of legal publications in Missouri. 

Whereas, well-known newspaper men of Northeast Missouri have or¬ 
ganized a Mark Twain Memorial Park Association, for the purpose of 
financing and establishing a large park at Florida, Mo., the birthplace 
of the great humorist, and 

Whereas, Mark Twain has brought great honor to his native state 
and brightened the lives of countless millions of people, and will stand 
in history as the foremost journalist of Missouri, therefore be it 

Resolved, that the Missouri Press Association give hearty indorse¬ 
ment to the proposed park and pledge to the Memorial Park Association 
its hearty co-operation in its effort to give to Missouri a literary shrine 
worthy of the world-famed genius it is intended to honor. 

The association expresses appreciation for the splendid hospitality 
extended to the members and to Journalism Week visitors. The special 
courtesy of the noonday luncheon by the Columbia Commercial Club, the 
hearty welcome and attention given by the School of Journalism students, 
and the several receptions, teas and other functions of the fraternities, 
sororities and individuals, have all combined to make this fourteenth an- 


News and the Newspaper 


7 


, nual Journalism Week one of the most enjoyable yet held. We are 
anticipating one more most unique and happy social feature in the banquet 
tendered by the South Manchuria Railway tonight. 

(Signed) 

Wm. Southern, Jr. 

Miss Anna E. NoeEn 
E. H. Smith 
C. L. Woods 
Asa W. Buteer 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


8 


What News to Print—The Publisher's View 

A New Type of Journalism 

By Willis J. Abbot 

Editor, the Christian Science Monitor, Boston, Mass. 

In addressing this audience the last thing that I wish is to appear 
dogmatic. Rather I desire to advance opinions tentatively, supporting 
them as best I may by facts drawn from my own experience, and invite 
you to consider them as propositions, at least worthy of discussion. Nor 
is it my purpose to laud the paper which I have the honor of editing, as 
the perfect type. I cannot refrain from citing the Christian Science Moni¬ 
tor as illustrative of the sort of journalism which I wish to uphold tonight, 
but I do not offer it without qualification as the paper which in all re¬ 
spects is best fitted to meet the journalistic needs of any especial city or 
locality. It does, however, afford an instance of clean journalism, of in¬ 
structive and at the same time interesting journalism. 

Newspaper competition, particularly in the large cities, is as fierce a 
struggle as is known to the industrial world. Yet, curiously enough, the 
nature of that competition has left in almost every city a journalistic 
field absolutely unoccupied. Every publisher sighs for such a field, yet 
in the race for enormous circulations the field of high-class, non-sensa- 
tional journalism has been left in the main untouched. In one or two 
cities efforts have been made to enter this arena with new papers, but the 
lack of press franchises, the difficulty of building up a delivery system 
and securing proper representation on news-stalls, and above all the bur¬ 
den of meeting out of capital the heavy costs which the established and 
profitable newspapers meet easily out of income, make the task a colossal 
one. The tendency nowadays is rather toward the disappearance of old 
newspapers than the establishment of new ones. 

We are inclined to make a good deal of ado about the enormous in¬ 
crease in the cost of newspapers today, but it is doubtful whether actual 
proportionate editorial expenses now are materially greater, if allowance 
be made for the increase in salaries, measured in money, which has ac¬ 
companied the increase cost of living in the thirty years. Moreover the 
apparent cost today of some of the popular features is shifted by the 
syndicate system. This syndicating of news and features has enormously 
reduced the editorial expenditures of newspapers, making possible the 
presentation to readers of a prodigious quantity of reading matter of 
every degree of quality at a moderate cost to the publisher. 

And yet, in my opinion, it is this development of the syndicate ser¬ 
vice that is largely responsible for the decadence in the fortunes of the 


News and the Newspaper 


9 


newspaper press as a whole—a decadence which is manifested in the 
steadily diminishing numbers of the papers that survive. It has resulted 
in standardizing the press of the Nation. It has made the papers of the 
interior cities of the United States so much alike that if the heading were 
cut off and the newspaper given for examination to a traveler, he would 
hardly be able to tell whether he was in Minneapolis, in Denver or in 
Detroit. This tendency to uniformity proceeds quite as much from the 
mechanical conditions existing as from the growing use of syndicated 
matter. 

With all of the papers in the country striving to be as alike as pos¬ 
sible, it seems to me very natural that the real competition among news¬ 
papers will proceed from the business office rather than from the editorial 
rooms; and that as combination rather than competition is the law of the 
business world, this process of combining papers is likely to progress. 
The Christian Science Monitor is, by the very nature of its editorial 
policy, estopped from taking part in this standardization, as it uses no 
syndicated matter nor does it syndicate any of the original matter which 
is prepared for its columns. 

While it has not one of the largest of circulations, it has perhaps the 
most widely distributed of any paper. It is spread from Alaska to Cape 
Town; from Russia to New South Wales. Published in Boston, it sells 
more papers on the Pacific Coast than in New England, and is more widely 
read in Great Britain than any other paper published outside His Britan¬ 
nic Majesty’s dominions. 

The Christian Science Monitor is primarily a newspaper. Three or 
four times a year it publishes in full a lecture in the mother church, the 
First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston. Every day it publishes in a 
prescribed position an essay on some problem of daily life and the method 
of dealing with it in Christian Science. But there its religious or sec¬ 
tarian activities end. It does not urge Christian Science on its readers, 
preach it in its editorial columns, or even print the news of the widely 
scattered churches. It gathers and prints the important news of the 
world, political, financial, social, educational, sporting and the rest. It 
has its membership in the Associated Press and its stock in the United 
Press. It gives three pages to that class of news which we call Wall 
Street, and two pages to sports. In its critical departments and on its 
editorial page it treats of the affairs of every-day life. 

Yet it was founded as part of a religious organization, and its char¬ 
acter was definitely fixed at the moment of its foundation. You know 
we Christian Scientists believe that diseased, evil or malignant thoughts 
are inevitably reflected in the physical condition of the thinker. It isn’t 
Christian Scientists alone who think this—most intelligent people admit 


10 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


it, and it is reflected in innumerable “don’t-worry clubs”, and the advice 
which every physician gives to keep his patient cheerful and hopeful. 


Mrs. Eddy said: 

Looking over the newspapers of the day, one naturally reflect 5 that_ it is .danger- 
ous to live, so loaded with disease seems the very air. These a neriodf- 

fears to many minds, to be depicted in some future time upon the body. A P erl0 <“ 
cal of our own will counteract to some extent this public nuisance; ^ through 
our paper, at the price at which we shall issue it, we shall be able to reach many 
homes with healing, purifying thought. 


So the religious nature of The Monitor is more fixed by what it ex¬ 
cludes than by what it prints. You will naturally ask what we exclude. 
Well, in the first place, reports of death. We do not force upon the at¬ 
tention of our readers the victims of that enemy which the Psalmist says 
shall be the last of all to be conquered. But if some great man is fallen 
in Israel we tell the facts of his useful life, with the emphasis on what 
he did while living. 

If you will keep in mind also that we do not print any stories of 
disease, crime, disaster or scandal, you will readily see that there is 
eliminated matter which fills perhaps 50 per cent of the distinctly news 
columns of other papers. It therefore becomes necessary to supply that 
lack. In the Monitor this is done largely by enormously increasing the 
volume of foreign news, both cable and mail. 

I am not unaware that among many newspaper editors there is a 
feeling that correspondence coming by mail has lost value—that anything 
that isn’t worth telegraphing or cabling isn’t worth printing. With this 
view I take sharp issue, and I think that the American press has suffered 
greatly by this inclination to substitute the necessarily brief and often 
scrappy cable letter for the carefully matured article, written by a stu¬ 
dent or an authority. An old rule in journalism is that news is news until 
it is printed. I think a more intelligent one is that news is news until 

it is read. . 

You will perhaps be interested in the way in which the Monitor col¬ 
lects its foreign news. We have in London a four-story building. We 
have installed there a European editor, with a staff of workers in the 
advertising, circulation and editorial departments. The Monitor sends 
into England between 8,000 and 9,000 copies daily, and constant work is 
done on the circulation in the United Kingdom. Moreover we have a 
very considerable advertising clientele, the payments from which more 
than meet all the expenditures of the London office, although this, I think, 
is a larger one than is maintained by any other newspaper abroad. 

To the London editor all our correspondents on the continent report. 
We have in Paris Mr. Sisley Huddleston, who serves also as correspond¬ 
ent for the London Times, and who is a well-known contributor to such 
magazines as the Atlantic Monthly. Mr. Huddleston has a competent 
staff of assistants. We sent to Berlin a man who had formerly been for- 


News and the Newspaper 


11 


eign editor on the New York Herald and who had received further train¬ 
ing in the office of the Christian Science Monitor. He, too, has helpers. 
In Rome we have two men. At Athens, Constantinople, Prague, Brussels 
and The Hague, one each. A very competent journalist, Mr. Henry 
Leech, covers Spain and Portugal. We are also maintaining special repre¬ 
sentatives at Cairo, Cape Town, Calcutta and through the East. The work 
of keeping these foreign correspondents always up to the mark is an 
arduous one. Their cable matter is sent direct to the Boston office, copies 
being sent to London for the records, but their mail matter, except in 
the case of those writing from the East or from Australia, is edited in the 
London office and sent over ready for use. The service passing through 
this London office will average 5,000 words of cable matter a day and 60,- 
000 to 70,000 words of mail matter weekly. 

The Monitor has achieved what most papers would call notable news 
beats, and it is worthy of consideration that most of these beats were 
matter coming by mail. For example, any American newspaper would 
find satisfaction in having its articles made the subject of inquiry in the 
House of Commons. This has happened twice within a very few months 
with the Monitor. 

Probably more than any other American newspaper it is known to 
the foreign offices of all nations. I think every diplomatic office in the 
world receives it, and the task of its editor is not made any lighter by 
the fact that most of the diplomatists take very seriously what is published 
in it. 

It is our study to use this influence for the maintenance of peace and 
good will at all times among the nations of the earth, and I think that 
this can best be attained by welding into a harmonious and indestructible 
whole, public sentiment in the two great English-speaking nations. 

I do not imagine that it will be necessary to expatiate particularly 
upon what the Monitor does in the way of collecting domestic news. We 
have the news furnished by the associations, and maintain bureaus in New 
York, Washington, Chicago and San Francisco, each with a competent 
staff. As much of the matter carried by the press associations is unavail¬ 
able for us, we take a very heavy special service in point of telegraph tolls. 
And yet it seems fair to say that so far as the Associated Press alone is 
concerned, a very great part of its matter is available for a paper holding 
the ethical standards maintained by the Monitor. It is going to be inter¬ 
esting to watch the policy of this great news gathering agency in the com¬ 
ing struggle between the sensational and the conservative elements in jour¬ 
nalism. Already members of the Associated Press that have ambitions to 
shine with huge circulations, however obtained, and are confronted by 
rivals who can spend more money on a special service, are calling upon 
the A. P. to send more matter of the kind now eliminated from its serv¬ 
ice. For example, at the time of the recent murder of a model in New 


12 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


York, which filled the columns of the sensational press, the manager of 
the Associated Press was confronted with telegrams from papers taking 
his service, complaining that they did not get as many of the horrifying 
details as were furnished to some of their rivals by their special corre¬ 
spondents in New York. Very properly this demand was not met. But 
it will be interesting to see whether the present restrained and conserva¬ 
tive policy of the Associated Press can withstand the demand from 
papers of a certain class for a larger measure of criminal news and less 
restraint in the manner of its telling. 

I want to touch, too, upon the argument raised by many capable and 
conscientious newspaper men, that the exploitation of criminal news ac¬ 
complishes a positive social service in that the news of the discovery of 
crime is a deterrent to the commission of other crimes, even though pun¬ 
ishment may not always follow upon this discovery. Now nobody can 
say positively how far this argument is well founded. But this is true 
and has been scientifically demonstrated that the systematic publishing of 
a series of criminal stories by the newspapers in a city, and their steady 
exploitation through a fixed period of time, invariably leads to an increase 
of crimes of precisely the sort that are described. 

Nobody will ever know how many thousands of lives have been sacri¬ 
ficed to the eagerness of the press to describe plagues and pestilences. Now 
what return does an editor get for putting in jeopardy the good order 
or the good health of his community by publishing news of this char¬ 
acter ? 

You may say he gets circulation. Whether the circulation is the re¬ 
sult of its publication of news of this sort or not, we do not know. Cer¬ 
tain it is that the papers which most debauch their columns by what I 
hold to be unfit news, also spend upon their circulation departments sums 
which seem extravagant and adopt all sorts of devices other than legiti¬ 
mate journalistic devices for the purpose of maintaining the circulation 
they have obtained by these unworthy methods. I read the other day of 
one newspaper in Chicago, which is justly celebrated for the vivacity and 
extent of its sensational news, having given away 17,000 clocks in one 
month to bolster up circulation. Is that journalism or is it the method 
of the showman? 

I cannot but feel that we are going to reach out some time for a new 
definition of journalism. I think the time is at hand when there will be 
in the mind of the educated journalist, such as a school of journalism 
should produce, a very sharp demarcation between the varying types of 
journalism, and another distinction drawn between circulation obtained 
by the legitimate methods of printing proper news, features and opinion, 
and circulation obtained by the devices of the charlatan, the sensationalist, 
or catch-penny gift distributions. 

It is not improbable that in time the editor is going to be aided by 


News and the Newspaper 


13 


the advertiser in the effort to maintain his profession on a more dignified 
plane. Ten or fifteen years ago the advertising pages even of very good 
papers, were filled with advertising which was disgusting and offensive in 
type. That has been cleared out. Quack medicines, suggestive shows, 
get-rich-quick schemes of all sorts are now debarred from the advertising 
pages of the better newspapers. Typographically, too, the appearance of 
the advertising pages has been enormously improved. 

But can we say that in these same papers the pages devoted to news 
are cleaner in substance or appearance than they were twenty years ago? 
Do we not find matter published as a matter of course in some of the 
most representative newspapers of the country that the so-called old- 
fashioned editor would not merely not have diligently sought for, but 
would have rejected if brought in? And just as the black surfaces have 
disappeared from the advertising pages, they have appeared in deeper 
black—unless they happen to be in bright scarlet—on the first pages of 
the papers of today which possess the largest circulation. 

The Christian Science Monitor lacks none of the devotion of the old 
type of journalism to the interests of its readers and of society as a whole 
as represented by those readers. It is not a partisan newspaper, but, on 
the other hand, it is by no means non-political. When a moral issue 
arises in this country—such as prohibition, the* support of public educa¬ 
tion, the enactment of protective legislation for women and children—the 
Monitor can hit as hard as any other paper. 

To me it seems that the young journalist just entering upon his pro¬ 
fessional career should not accept the example of the so-called great 
dailies of today as indicative of what the newspaper of the future, that 
he is to make, is going to be. It may be mere speculation on my part, 
bred of the environment in which I work, but I think that I can discern 
a distinct trend away from the sensationalism of the present daily press 
toward a more informative, dignified and restrained newspaper. Certainly 
this tendency will have to be developed and cultivated if newspaper edi¬ 
tors wish to recover that public influence which it is universally admitted 
they now have lost, and if we are to recover the voice of authority, with 
which the successful editor of twenty-five years ago often spoke. 


Devitalized Journalism 

By Richard Leo yd Jones 

Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, Perry-Lloyd Jones Newspapers, Tulsa, Okla. 

A newspaper is not a namby-pamby publication of Inconsequential 
facts; it is not even an almanac of the week, or of the day. It is the 
record of the unusual events. It may be an important address delivered 
by the President of the United States or one by the premier of England. 


14 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


It may be the story of a harrowing holocaust in some distant town, or it 
may be the local story of the town druggist who slipped and fell off the 
roof of his house. 

A woman reader recently wrote me a friendly letter which was filled 
with words of commendation but which closed with a common complaint 
against the newspapers. She said: 

Your paper stands for civic decency, honest public service, law enforcement and 
respect for government as few newspapers do. That is why I like to read it but 
I would like to see your news columns as clean as your editorial policy. I would 
like to take at least one newspaper with the assurance that I could let my children 
read it without first looking it over to see if it contains some story they should not 
read. With so many good things to write about, so many things to do to make the 
city beautiful, can’t you make for us the one newspaper that does not have to report 
all crimes, murders, suicides and tragedies? 

How often we all hear this sweeping indictment of the press. This 
well-intentioned indictment is as thoughtless as it is sweeping. Were we 
to edit along the lines suggested by this good mother, we would no longer 
get out a NEWSpaper and we do not believe that we would publish a 
paper that many would want to read.,/ 

This brings us to the consideration of what is news. When you have 
defined news you will have determined what the newspaper is or at least 
what it should be. 

Where do newspapers get their names? The Herald, the Courier, 
the Messenger, all runners from place to place before we had a press. The 
Tribune was the old Roman officer to whom the common people could 
bring their complaints against the wrongdoer. The Guardian is the same 
idea. The Journal and the Record are names used to denote the history 
of the day. The Post is the old town stump where the written news are 
pinned to be read by the people as they came to the market-place. k 
comes the title Bulletin. Steam and electricity brought us such names as 
“Mail”, “Express”, “Telegtam”. To denote efficiency as newsgatherers 
newspapers take such names as Inquirer or Examiner. At all events news¬ 
papers indicate by their title that they seek to find out the news and be¬ 
friend the people by taking the news to the people. 

And now what is news? 

If Will Smith is kind to his mother-in-law and takes her out for a 
ride every day that is hardly news though it may be somewhat unusual. 
But if Will Smith puts arsenic in his mother-in-law’s coffee, that is news. 
That is the news that a complaining people would have brought to the old 
Roman Tribune. It is the news that would have been tacked on the Bulle¬ 
tin on the old town Post; it is the news that would have been entered in 
the Journal or the Record of the day. That is the news that the Press 
Telegram flashes over the wires or is brought in by fast Mail. The modern 
newspaper does more than report the fact that Will Smith put arsenic in 
his mother-in-law’s coffee. With the spirit of the Examiner or the In¬ 
quirer it probes that story ar^ finds the why. That why is just as essen- 


News and the Newspaper 


15 


tial to the scientist who seeks social solutions in the laboratory of society 
as the why of any chemical change to the chemist. 

If a train meets with disaster at an open switch and lives are lost, 
what NEWSpaper would fail to report that disaster? No paper is a 
NEWSpaper unless it would not only report the disaster but probe into 
and publish the why of the disaster. 

If a department store takes fire, if that store has permitted sales to be 
conducted high above the street level, on wooden floors resting on com¬ 
bustible timbers, with inadequate fire-fighting facilities, inadequate fire 
escapes, doors that open in direct violation of the fixed regulations of the 
law—if fire develops in such a store with a tragic loss of life, the story 
of that fire does not stop with the account of how the fire marshal played 
the water streams upon the crematory flames. That fire story does not 
stop until it fastens itself in the City Hall where loaf the bribed or in¬ 
different public officials who permit such a firetrap to operate in violation 
of the law. 

It is not a pleasant story, the rehearsing of the horrors of such a 
disaster; but it is the NEWSpaper’s duty to the public to tell it and to 
tell it straight and to the end. That is the story the ancient Courier would 
have carried. The modern Messenger must do no less. 

The NEWSpaper that does the best service to the community is the 
newspaper that will point out the firetrap that is in operation and warn 
the people of the danger rather than wait for the disaster. 

Unpleasant reading, the thoughtless critics say. How often we have 
heard the comment, “If I ran a newspaper, I would publish none of this 
harrowing stuff. I would tell nothing of the suicides and murders, the 
awful loss of lives.” 

How many would clamor to read your culture club theses on the 
“Psychology of the Infant Mind” or the “Esthetic Values of City Zoning”? 
What Herald of old would lash a jaded horse to spread such news as 
this? Can you imagine a newsboy crying “extra” through the streets ex¬ 
hibiting a press product whose first-page headlines read “Mrs. Piper Gives 
a Paper on the Cubist Painters”? 

The trouble is, few people understand what a newspaper is. When 
they do, they will demand that the newspapers do their duty, as many of 
them do not. When they know what a newspaper is, they will measure 
its worth not so much by what it reports as by how it interprets what it 
reports and with what degree of fidelity to the public cause it inquires 
into the why of the record. 

It is not the horror of the loss of life itself that shocks; it is not the 
suicide or the murder, or the railroad wreck that to your fancy makes un¬ 
inviting reading, because these are the things you always read. It is only 
the reader who fails to see the lesson of the horror or the disaster which 
warrants the story, who finds in it nothing but a hideous thing. When he 


16 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


puts the lesson of the why in that story, he builds it into an object lesson 
of warning and greater security for the living. Why condemn the news¬ 
paper for giving the life lessons that show the ills of the hour that can be 
corrected, while you cherish the same sort of stories that can give you no 
concrete thought as to your specific citizenship duty now ? 

Go look over your library shelf. There in best bindings you have the 
stories of suicide and murder, of broken romances and deceptions, criminal 
negligence, or treachery, theft, falsehood, double dealing, revenge, be¬ 
trayal, intimidation, rascality, passion, avarice and jealousy. These are 
the themes of enduring literature. They make up your library and mine. 
The greatest poet the world has ever known was an English chap by the 
name of Will Shakespeare. He told of Lear and the infamous treachery 
of trusted daughters. Brutus could not bear to live with the murderous 
wound in his conscience that his own hand inflicted. The avalanche of 
avarice struck Shylock when he demanded his pound of flesh. Every one 
of these stories would have been an extra cried down the street, had they 
been fact instead of fiction; and had they been events instead of stage 
sets of fancy drawn from the experience of life as heralded by the courier 
of old and as told by the news vender of today. 

What is the good mother who writes us going to do with the Romeo 
and Juliet story of 1923? Hide it from her children, who will never 
recognize its counterpart placed in earlier Venetian settings? What good 
will they ever be when the service of a citizen is demanded of them if they 
cannot make as good use of a fact as a playwright made of a fable? 
Would the wise mother suppress the story of such a broken romance or 
would she pick the newspaper which can build a moral lesson out of the 
pathetic tragedy? That well-meaning mother sends her son to college 
today that he may read the poetic presentation of a romance that was 
wrecked in its hopeless battle against the flood waters of an unkindly so¬ 
cial current. She sends him to college today that he may read the mur¬ 
ders of Macbeth, and the soliloquy of Hamlet on the frailties of woman. 
She sends him to college to read both in the literature of drama and the 
history of nations the soul-consuming ambitions of the bloodthirsty Rich¬ 
ard III. These stories of selfishness, ambition and greed led to murder 
and to suicide. What good are these stories as idle reading? Will her 
protected child ever find the life lessons that in duplicate come in less 
poetic form from the lips of the Courier or the pencil of the reporter? 

Unpleasant stories to read perhaps, but the newspaper would be 
derelict of duty that, finding a Jean Valjean crawling through a rat-run city 
sewer, would not report the full truth of that miserable creature and trace 
to the end the cause for such a searcher for revenge. 

Merchants and realtors may enter into secret agreements to keep 
out of a city all who do not yield to their selfish policy and plan, and 
thereby halt the growth of the city through their carefully plotted graft. 


News and the Newspaper 


17 


All of which makes unpleasant reading to some; and yet on your library 
shelves in gilt top and morocco binding you will find Ibsen’s “Pillars of 
Society”, the story of criminal negligence. You will find Clyde Fitch’s 
forceful modern play, “The City,” with the story of the prominent citizen 
and good churchman whose benevolence was made possible by the plunder¬ 
ing practice of pilfering the public purse and endangering the life of the 
city by building a sewer that could not stand the test of enduring usage 
and brought upon the people the added curse of plague. 

Unpleasant story? But there is nothing in life so precious as life 
itself. It is the distressing situations, the unusual incidents, that give us 
the lessons in life. 

All individuals are not important. In fact, few are. But the un¬ 
warranted loss of life is of community importance because the community 
by that organization which we call Society has pledged itself to protect 
human life. No one is a true member of Society or a true supporter of 
government, who would suppress the news of the wanton loss of human 
life and substitute for it a dissertation upon the “City Beautiful”. 

The greatest story in the history of America is the story of a murder. 
It held first page in every newspaper in the land for over a fortnight. It 
was the story of the murder of Lincoln. 

The greatest story in the history of the world is the story of a Cruci¬ 
fixion. It is the dramatic climax of the greatest Book that ever came into 
the hands of man. Orthodox ministers are today insisting on the literal 
interpretation of that text. They at least must believe that the Almighty 
Himself staged that Crucifixion—staged it that the sacrifice and the suf¬ 
fering on that Cross might drive home to you and to me the sustaining 
philosophy and the enduring truths which He came among us to teach. 

Every loss of life, however humble, unknown or undeserving the 
principal of the tragedy may be, has for us its social lesson and its elo¬ 
quent plea for a better life. To present that plea and that lesson is the 
purpose of the press. And if this be not a right purpose, then all the 
books you cherish, even the greatest, are without, at least to you, a pur¬ 
poseful place in life. 

A brief survey of the newspapers in the United States made two years 
ago revealed the fact that in the year preceding 1920, eighty-four news¬ 
papers consolidated; that 82 per cent of the newspapers in the country 
were mortgaged and that over 1,300 newspapers in that year alone died. 
The newspaper is the business on which the mercantile business of the 
country is built, without which it would shrink to such proportions as to 
undermine the entire commercial structure of the country; and yet the 
newspaper business, this cornerstone, foundation and supporter of the 
whole commercial edifice, is at the bottom of the list on business credit. 

This brings the question: Can the newspaper be the defender of the 
people when it must be the prostitute of the retail merchants and the bankers 


18 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


that are back of them, or be driven out of business by the big business 
bullies. 

Charles Edward Russell, one of the great writers in America today, 
a man who has long been a student of society and the structure of gov¬ 
ernment, recently wrote an article which he captioned “Applying the Ham 
Idea to Journalism,” in which he lamented the fact that the Horace Greeley, 
William Cullen Bryant, Charles A. Dana and Henry Watterson type ot 
editor was being driven out of the newspaper business; they are being 
driven out by the ham-minded men who are forcing the newspapers to be 
ham-hooks with which to get their ham. 

The builders of this Nation realized that this government could never 
be a “land of the free and the home of the brave” unless the people should 
be enlightened that they might have the wisdom to govern themselves and 
protect their rights. They knew that a democracy must lift itself up by 
its own bootstraps. They know that the school does not provide educa¬ 
tion ; it merely gives the tools with which to get education. Graduation 
day is not the finish but the “commencement” of life. The builders of this 
Nation created a special class of mail for the newspapers and created a 
rate for that class of mail that was designed to conduct that business on 
a non-profit basis for the government, even if need be to conduct it a* a 
loss. The deficit was to be supplied, by the taxes from the people, just 
as the people are taxed for the schools. And this because the newspaper 
was looked upon as the legitimate continuation school. 

The newspapers that are run with the ham idea, by ham-minded men, 
are run in violation of a moral contract with the United States govern¬ 
ment; they are run to misinform the people; to teach them half-truths or 
full falsehoods. And to that full extent they are untrue to the high 
trust which their country imposes in them. They are examples of bad 
patriotism, bad citizenship and a chloroformed conscience. 

Look to the men at the head of some of your metropolitan papers, 
and measure them. Intellectually, they are pygmies. If they ever had any 
purposeful courage, they long since lost it to the ham-hunters who hold 
them by the throat. 

Some of these editors put on all the appearance of pious men and 
some of them, with a more commendable frankness, make little pretense 
to respectability. I have in mind an editor in one city of substantial 
population who, for years, was the notorious protector of the under¬ 
world, who confessed to me that after having made his pile through the 
iniquitous practices of blackmail and extortion, the time had come for 
him to go straight. Needless to say, he didn’t know how to. 

Medical science has discovered that a large number of human ail¬ 
ments which formerly were supposed to be developed from other sources, 
are traceable directly to devitalized teeth. The devitalized tooth is the 
dead tooth; the nerve extracted, the tooth still standing. The dead tooth 


News and the Newspaper 


19 


has a habit of developing about its roots a poison called pyorrhea. This 
pyorrhea germ multipliees until it loosens the teeth and the owner of the 
dead tooth loses his biting power. What is more, the pyorrhea germ finds 
its way into the arteries of the body until its poison so saturates the 
whole system that the heart can no longer resist the encroachments, and 
the dead tooth has made a dead man. 

The newspaper was designed to be the informer and the defender 
of the people. Ham-minded bankers and merchants, by the process of their 
“all-for-us and after-us-the-deluge” patriotic policy and practice, have 
taken the nerve out of newspapers; they have clubbed editors into line 
until the independent newspapers that loved the idea of a government of 
the people, for the people and by the people, have been put out of busi¬ 
ness—forced into devitalized consolidations. The structure stands there 
with all the appearance of being a strong tooth, of being a defender of 
the people, but its nerve is gone, and all the time it is seeping poison 
through its press, undermining the very structure of a free government 
and striking at the very citadel of the ideals that Washington and Jefferson 
and their lofty-minded patriots bequeathed us. 

Where is the hope for release? Frankly, I know of none except the 
rising tide of protest that is growing in the popular repudiation of the 
press. 

Within the rank of journalist workers the first hope of any possible 
rise of patriotic press leadership is with the small-town newspaper. 

That because the newspaper business is prohibitively costly; the me¬ 
chanical equipment and the necessary operating costs of conducting any 
metropolitan paper run quickly into millions. The small-town paper, 
with less investment, offers high opportunity and is a consecrated calling 
for the youth who will go into the newspaper business with ministerial 
sincerity. 

There is no professional vocation open to the youth today which has 
such a tremendous field for service to country and to humanity as the 
newspaper vocation. If you have a county weekly that only has a 
thousand circulation you have by the mathematics of newspaper calcula¬ 
tions approximately five thousand readers. There is not a preacher in 
New York City who, standing in his pulpit, faces such a congregation. 
That is why I pay tribute to the School of Journalism in the University 
of Missouri, which, elsewhere as here, I have declared to be the best 
school of journalism in the United States, excepting not even Columbia’s 
famous journalistic laboratories, because here Dean Williams has put the 
emphasis of his teaching on both the dignity and the power for service, as 
well as adequate financial return on the editor who honestly edits for a 
county populace. 

I find such friends of mine as Charles Edward Russell, Will Irwin, 
Samuel Hopkins Adams and others, all fine fellows, all keen students of 


20 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


society, all earnest workers for humanity’s cause, and yet not one of them 
has ever had the courage to invest himself in an effort to construct the 
kind of thing they plead for and demand of those they criticise. We need 
more men like Charlie Russell, Will Irwin and Sam Adams; but we need 
them more as owners of a newspaper press and directors of that press 
than we need them as uninvested, irresponsible critics of the press. We 
need more men like William Allen White to show us what can be done. 

I come to you with this message: 

Do not avoid NEWS. Tell it. Avoid private scandal always, except 
where its court record or vital statistics concern the social structure. Then 
point out its lesson in the telling as the novelist or dramatist would do. 

Tell all the public scandal. The paving contractor who charges the 
city for rock excavation when he only digs sand, who lays concrete be¬ 
tween curbs 32 feet apart and sends to the city a 46-foot bill should be 
exposed, and the paper is an enemy of society that will not search out these 
facts and boldly publish them. The newspaper that will ignore that story 
to give space to some pleasing sunshine thesis that is good reading any 
old time and in any old place, may serve the needs of a cult but it will 
never serve the needs of our country. 


The New Journalism 

By Frank P. Glass 
Editorial Director, St. Louis Star 

This matter of the new journalism is a very important question for 
me at this time. I have come out of the lower South, beyond the middle 
age of life, into a new territory under totally new conditions, and I am 
trying to find myself in the journalism of a great city and in this daring, 
progressive West. You can readily understand that this question of the 
new journalism is uppermost in my mind in some form or another every 
hour of the day. 

Down in St. Louis I have been trying to find out just what the new 
journalism in that great city demanded in order that I might get into the 
procession and help make a greater success of the newspaper with which 
I am connected. But the more I have studied this situation, the more 
I have come to the conclusion that the proper thing to undertake is to 
make a newspaper just as different from the other newspapers as I pos¬ 
sibly can. And I am hunting in all directions for all the brains and all 
the originality, all the energy and progressive young spirit that I can find 
in different parts of the country to help solve that question. 

I think that the journalism of today i§ altogether too commercial. I 
think we have gotten too far away from the old regime, in which there 
were dominant spirits whose personality incorporated itself into the spirited 


News and the Newspaper 


21 


undertakings of their newspapers and who made themselves powers in 
their communities, in their states and in their sections. 

The new journalism, to my mind, is too much of a tendency to 
making a newspaper merely a factory for the production of advertising 
space. The whole tendency of daily newspapers, and especially, I think, of 
the evening newspapers, which are getting to be much more successful 
and profitable all over the country than the morning papers, is to get 
larger circulation by catering to all classes of people with all sorts of things 
that may not have the best influence, much frivolous and unwholesome 
matter. The result is that there is no such thing as a general newspaper. 
You will not find much general Missouri news in any Missouri newspaper 
—certainly not as much as ten years ago. 

There is no longer one complete newspaper in Chicago in the broad¬ 
est sense. The New York Times perhaps is the most complete newpaper 
at the present time in the United States. It always has something about 
anything of great importance that may have occurred during the day be¬ 
fore in every state in the Union. You cannot find in the bulk of New 
York, Chicago, Cincinnati or St. Louis newspapers, very much of what 
is going on outside of what may be called the ABC territory—the local 
circulation bounds. 

The whole process of making the modern newspaper is to treat it the 
same as a department store; to publish in it everything that will attract 
the women particularly, the children, and incidentally maybe, the men. 
This was emphasized to me several years ago by one of the most suc¬ 
cessful newspapermen in the country, a Boston pioneer. This gentleman 
said to me, to use the vernacular: 

“In making the newspaper, forget the men. Blankety-blank the men! 
Make the newspaper for the women. They buy the dry goods, groceries, 
children’s clothing, etc. They are the ones among whom circulation must 
be had. Then you will get advertising and make the newspaper profit¬ 
able.” 

He did not carry that principle to the nth degree, but there are neigh¬ 
bors and successors of his in Boston today who are carrying out to the 
nth degree such principles. And so it is that in all the great cities the 
day of the great editor is passed. The day of the great editorial influence 
for the uplift of political parties, commonwealths, national undertaking, 
for the direction of affairs, has largely passed away, and the new journal¬ 
ism bows to the supreme in power, the autocrat of the business office. 
The business office wants circulation. The business office says to the cir¬ 
culation manager, go out and get all the circulation you can in the limits 
of the city. Print local news, comic strips, women’s stuff, diverse stories— 
all those things that will attract local circulation. Get out red, green, yel¬ 
low sporting sheets, and everything that will attract people who love 


22 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


sport. The more local circulation we can get, the more advertising we 
will command, the faster we can advance our advertising rate. 

The new journalism has been very much of a descent downward. 
Perhaps there are some evidences of a reaction today. I hope there may 
be more. I think there is an increasing tendency to improve the first page, 
at any rate, in news values—to get the most notable news from the United 
States and other parts of the world and play it up in an attractive and 
readable way. So far as the other parts of the newspaper are concerned, 
we find comparatively little news except local matter, murders, divorces, 
crimes, pages and pages of women’s pictures, sports—and so it goes. 

I think there are many of us that have the old-fashioned idea about 
a newspaper: that it has a moral responsibility and function to perform 
in playing up the right sort of thing in the right sort of way. I thoroughly 
agree with Mr. Richard Lloyd Jones’ view, that in printing stories of 
crimes, fraud, divorces, etc., it can be done in such a way as to cause 
a reversion in public opinion against wrong ways of living and the wrong 
way of life. But the average newspaper in the larger cities is going too 
much after sensational stuff and handling it in a sensational way, so that 
people have cultivated in them an abnormal taste for things that are of 
no service to them. They do not read papers to learn lessons, but simply 
to be entertained and thrilled. 

But the worst result of this journalism is to develop a large class of 
criminal boys. One of the principal social workers of St. Louis said to 
me lately that the great problem of that city today is to take care of the 
idle boys who are out of school in the summer time and to prevent them 
from being systematically educated in a real school of crime. That may 
be a revelation to you excellent people who live in smaller cities. It was 
certainly a revelation to me, that there are men systematically conducting 
schools of crime for the boys idle during the summer. And it is true of 
all the largest cities. 

There is a great field for journalism with a conscience, journalism 
with a high purpose, journalism that has a forward look into good citizen¬ 
ship—and this is the sort of journalism that every rising newspaper man 
and woman should have held up before him as a goal. There never was 
a period in the history of this country when there was more need of the 
right sort of newspapers to lead in the right sort of methods in taking 
care of the younger generation. 

All these cities of ours, all these manufacturing centers, all these 
great populations have tremendously increased the power of the press 
for the relief of all sorts of social ills, and it is going to take newspapers 
with conscience, newspapers with vision, and newspapers whose nerves 
have not been devitalized, to go out and organize the good people of the 
city, who are always in the majority, to protect themselves, their families, 


News and the Newspaper 


23 


their generation, from the degenerating and deteriorating influences about 
them. 

There are numerous ways and means in which this can be done. The 
main thing today, it seems to me, is to soft-pedal, not to eliminate, accounts 
of human errors and failures. I think a newspaper should be a picture 
of the every-day life of the community, printing the good things and the 
constructive things people are doing, as well as the evil things some of 
them are doing. Therefore, comes this great practical problem for every 
newspaper man and woman—to see how the newspaper can be better used 
for sociological work, for sociological uplift, for stamping out all of 
those currents of evil in our rapidly growing centers of the population, and 
in assembling the moral strength of every community into a practical, 
tangible, effective way of combating these evil currents. 

It is a very serious problem from the standpoint of a newspaper. 
Here is this competition going on among the successful newspapers every¬ 
where to get circulation, get circulation, get circulation, in every way, 
shape or form. And how on earth are these newspapers that aspire to 
circulations of millions and profits of millions to be diverted from this 
process of commercialism into wholesome organizations for the study of 
the serious criminal and sociological problems and for work of service 
to the community and state. It is a problem that every school of journal¬ 
ism should be taking up most seriously. I frankly confess that it is the 
most puzzling problem to me. 

Every one of you reporters, advertising men, and what not, as you 
get out into the active field of newspaperdom, will find about every office 
the first question—how will it affect circulation? What is to be done 
about circulation? But the newspaper that goes about getting circulation 
first, foremost and all the time, is bound to find itself in trouble. That 
sort of newspaper will produce bad results to the newspaper as well as 
the community. It may not survive, but in the meantime it is successful, 
and has a demoralizing effect. Everybody wants to be successful, and the 
temptation is to join this great current of sensationalism that produces 
circulation and advertising. 

I trust that you will not study too closely all of the newspapers in the 
largest cities of this country as models of newspaperdom. I think there 
are more models of good newspaper conduct in places of 10,000 and 20,000 
than in great cities. The redemption of the larger newspapers in this 
country is going to depend upon the ideals and methods that the men 
whom I see before me here today are going to set up in the smaller 
cities, in the smaller communities, where there is more conscience and 
higher ideals than there is in many of the greater centers of population in 
the country. 


24 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


What News to Print—The Reader's View 

What the Lawyer Wants in the N ewspaper 

By Jesse W. Barrett 

Attorney-General of Missouri, Jefferson City 

I look on you as public officers. Newspaper editors are nothing else. 
You have public powers and you have also corresponding obligations and 
responsibilities. 

You are the chief medium of communication between the people and 
their official representatives. The people themselves do not come to the 
seat of government, and do not witness the work of their agents in public 
office. They must know whether they are being served or despoiled, but 
they cannot know except through your reports. Accurate, fair-minded 
journalism is therefore indispensable to intelligent and effective self-gov¬ 
ernment. You hold in sacred trust for the body politic its functions of 
sight and speech, and a breach of that trust is treason. 

Once we regarded railroads as private corporations. Then public 
opinion awoke to the fact that railroads are altogether of a public nature; 
that they are the arteries through which flows the Nation’s commerce, 
and that they must be conducted for the benefit of all citizens alike. 

So too we used to believe that newspapers were private possessions 
and that the editor could use his news columns just as he desired. A few 
years ago in fact, every newspaper was devoted to battling for some par¬ 
ticular cause and its readers who were supporters of that cause seemed 
to want the news distorted to suit their prejudices. Now public opinion 
is realizing that an editor holds a public trust, and that the newspapers 
are the arteries through which flow public information and public intelli¬ 
gence—the very life blood of the Nation itself. Newspapers, like rail¬ 
roads, are common carriers. There must be no rebates, no discrimina¬ 
tions, no partiality. Coloring the news articles to keep them from contra¬ 
dicting the editorials is a criminal act, whether the statutes say so or not. 

A landmark of progress was made the other day by the editorial 
writers when they adopted a canon of ethics. I think it would be fair 
to comment, by the way, that all who are familiar with his refreshing and 
wholesome writings, rejoiced in the selection of Casper S. Yost of the St. 
Louis Globe-Democrat as the head of the American Society of Newspaper 
Editors. It seems to me that there should also be a definite expression 
of ethics for the conduct of the news columns and that the canon could 
be stated in the words, “See clearly and report accurately.” 

Editors are like sentinels upon the mountain top, searching the horizon 
in all directions, ready at all hours to set up a cry of warning at the ap¬ 
proach of public enemies. You are working for right against might, for 


News and the Newspaper 


25 


intelligence in place of force, for light in lieu of darkness, for order in¬ 
stead of chaos. Public officials are helped by your comments and your 
criticisms, but you yourselves do not have that benefit of criticism of your 
work by others. You would profit more if you encouraged criticism. 

There is a type of editorial page which believes that the people are 
interested only in destructive comment and never in construction. Its 
editorials always condemn. The editorial writer in charge of the page 
believes that the public are altogether cynics and dyspeptics. Its nearest 
approach to commendation for some really good act is to say how wrong 
its omission would have been. The editorial writer who really helps is the 
one who knows that credit properly bestowed pays to the public a thou¬ 
sandfold return. If words of encouragement and commendation are not 
the only reason for public service, they are at least the only reward. It 
is better to be praised with faint damns than to be damned with faint 
praise. 

The worst editorial writer of all (and thank goodness examples are 
rare) is the one who, finding that the curtain has risen on a group of 
persons busily sawing wood and accomplishing something worth while, 
comes striding onto the stage cracking a cattle-whip, trying to create the 
illusion that he is directing the work and is responsible for its being done. 

I do not believe, as is oftentimes said, that editorials are losing their 
power. I feel that some editorial columns only have lost their influence, 
and that the people are becoming more able to distinguish between sin¬ 
cerity and sham. Character means power, in journalism just as every¬ 
where else and so it will always be as long as civilization endures. 

What the Preacher Wants in the Newspaper 

By Dr. Claudius B. Spencer 
Editor, Central Christian Advocate, Kansas City 

The minister and the newspaper have this in common: each is a pur¬ 
veyor of news. The word Gospel means news—good news. Moreover, 
the minister is a man of the time. He is a prophet; because a prophet, as 
distinguished from a priest, was called upon to proclaim the news, to 
interpret and drive home the events of the day, their significance and im¬ 
plications. We see this vividly in the great speeches of the prophets, 
speaking in the open air, in the gates of their cities, vividly portraying the 
current facts, vividly proclaiming their consequences. In a sense, as 
the great newspaper is first of all foretelling the news, and incidentally 
foretelling the consequences, the prophet dealt with the vast, Homeric, 
retributive moral laws of cause and effect, which make still and forever 
the fires of Sinai blaze across the centuries. 

The minister, I say, builds his house by the side of the road, to be a 
friend to man. He has that in common with the newspaper; albeit, he 


26 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


has more. Steeples are made to point to heaven, but they are not made 
to live in. 

The preacher is the symbol of the normal, cosmopolitan, independent, 
human being, with no gaff in his cheek, craving his newspaper to help 
him advance the common good, pushing bravely, not into the counting 
room, but forward where he thinks he sees God’s torch. 

I. 

Someone said the world is governed by three boxes, the cartridge 
box, the band box, and the ballot box. In this country at least, he must 
add a fourth box, the mail box, the little schoolmaster of the people. It 
is the mail box that fires the cartridge box, because ideas are the great 
explosives; they bring on wars. Secretary of State Hughes says that 
what we need is mental disarmament—first and foremost the disarmament 
of the mind. Precisely so. It is that schoolmaster, whose desk is where- 
ever a newspaper is set up and sent into the mails, that schoolmaster that 
straps on or unbuckles the cartridge box, that I speak to in setting down 
“what the preacher wants in the newspaper”. 

Let us start with that—the newspaper as the maker of public opinion, 
that omnipotent thing that makes or unmakes the kingdom of God on 
earth. And let me lay it down in the language of that great citizen, who 
was a great journalist as well as a great minister, Washington Gladden, 
that “to generate and diffuse a sound, sweet, vigorous, generous, public 
opinion is to build the Republic of God in the earth”; and in that I define 
the alpha and the omega of what the preacher wants in the newspaper, 
little or big, the country paper, on which most of us were brought up, and 
the great metropolitan paper with its thundering power to kill and 
to make alive. 

Pursuing this thought, let me say that what the minister wants in the 
newspaper is the truth. Does he get it? The people are entitled to it. 
In a democracy they must have the truth, for there is no salvation in 
falsehood, in caricature, in misinterpretation. The head of a great daily 
observed to me on the Pacific Coast some time ago that when he wanted 
to crush opposition he attacked it through his reporters not his editors. 
The reporters got what they were told to find. By distortion he inflamed 
public opinion; he gave it maddening drugs, as it were, tore down, and 
on the ruins built his ambition which combined the demagogue and the 
dictator. 

I might say that there was, and is, a well-defined belief through this 
country, eminently so among the ministers,, that the publicity given the 
great steel strike was propaganda; it was not square to both sides. Is there 
not right now in the turbulence against us in Mexico the sinister Franken- 
stem of misinformation? Do we get the truth? But international mis¬ 
information is an old story. It has caused more bloodshed since the in- 


News and the Newspaper 


27 


vention of movable type than all other causes combined. I wish that 
someone would tell us about that Russian Soviet, now passing into its 
second phase of evolution as well as revolution. And, gentlemen, who 
will say that the papers are quite fair and square as to the Eighteenth 
Amendment ? 

Let us have the truth, a free press to speak it, because misleading 
begets suspicion; and what will not suspicion in time of upheaval do? 
Paris in ’93, Paris in the Commune, and Russia in 1918 are vivid answers. 

Gentlemen of the press, you have an example of what I mean in that 
wonderful creation of the modern world, what a visitor from Mars 
might think our greatest wonder, the Associated Press. Its news is read 
every day by 75 per cent of our 110,000,000 population. And Melville E. 
Stone, speaking at the Kansas Newspaper Week at the University of 
Kansas in 1914, declared—I presume with considerable pride—that the 
organization had never paid a dollar of damages in an action for libel 
nor had it ever compromised a single case. 

II. 

I wish I might ask for co-operation from our Missouri papers in the 
matter of church news. I do not say this in criticism. Often the preacher 
himself has no news sense, and all the papers get is the pink teas. 

I wish that the country editors would drop in at every church con¬ 
ference, convention, assembly, in their town and be introduced and tell 
the preachers a few things. There would be less fumbles of the ball. 
One of our greatest bishops, Bishop Oldham of Singapore, was reported 
in a Kansas City paper as “the Bish of Snigapore”, and the rest was 
about as accurate. Of course, that is no worse than the Chicago daily 
which in reporting a great and enthusiastic Democratic meeting on the 
lake front, said that the Democrats rent the air with their snouts. Come, 
yourselves, gentlemen of the press, to the church gatherings, or send 
your maturest reporters. 

III. 

Gentlemen, the preacher wants the newspaper to be clean. In this 
I am no stickler, no sentimentalist. Whether I read it or not, there were 
several millions in this country who wanted to know about that mixup of 
Jess Willard of Kansas and someone, I believe, from Iowa, in New 
York City a week or so ago, when $600,000 was paid at the gate. 

But the preacher wants the newspaper that invades the homes of his 
community to be clean. I was last September in a far-off mining and 
railroad town in New Mexico. I found in the hotel and stores a daily 
paper which had come in on the same train. I learned it was the paper 
generally taken through the little city—it was the little school-master 
of the community. After counting out the want ads and the full-page 


28 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


ads, nine of the sixteen pages left featured crime and sensuality, the 
entire country combed for salacious stories behind divorces, murders due 
to the eternal triangle, not fit for the Police Gazette in the old low bar¬ 
ber shop with the sheet-iron stove. This daily invaded that community 
every day, pouring its sewers across the threshold, its degeneration and 
leprosy over the young folks of the place. This you will say is not ger¬ 
mane to this particular occasion. On the contrary, it makes the School 
of Journalism a public necessity, to standardize from its great prestige 
the Ten Commandments of Journalism—one of which certainly must be 
decency. 

I know that in the large, what the minister wants in the newspaper 
in this particular, he is getting. And I wish to say to the newspaper men 
here present that the ministry as a class appreciates it. We know you, 
the custodians of the home life, its sanctity, its defence. There are skele¬ 
tons in your pigeon holes. There you are strong enough in character and 
ideals to keep them buried. We appreciate how often and how much you 
put your foot on the snake of sensational temptation. 

The editor has the power of the boycott. He has the poisoned sting 
of innuendo, the deadly stroke of sensational misinterpretation, for while 
the sensation is read by millions the correction is read by nobody. I know 
of more than one case where long and useful and inspirational careers 
have been wrecked by a cub reporter’s smartness in his opening sentence. 
I read two years ago a disquieting statement concerning an eminent 
preacher and only within two months have learned that it had no founda¬ 
tion in the world, except a cub reporter’s failure to grasp the fact. I 
wish the older men wrote the copy on matters of religion. 

IV. 

Gentlemen, what the preacher, or at any rate this preacher, wants in 
your papers is the encouragement of the young folks in your town. 
Howells learned to write in the dingy old printing office. William Allen 
White began there. One of the greatest of the bygone journalists, ap¬ 
prenticed at $35 a year, sneaked in some paragraphs. The editor told him 
to keep on. He did. He rose to the top. Beyond numbering is the legion 
that have kept on because of editorial encouragement. 


What the Farmer Wants in the Newspaper 

By Chester H. Gray 

Former President of the Missouri Farm Bureau Federation, Nevada. 

To my mind, newspapers divide themselves into what is ordinarily 
called the country newspaper, and the metropolitan press. You will par¬ 
don me if I devote my consideration almost exclusively to the first class, 


News and the Newspaper 


29 


the newspaper published in the small country town and in the county 
seat. That is the newspaper to which the farmer gets closest and which 
needs to get closest to the farmer. 

There is great competition between these two classes of newspapers, 
and the metropolitan paper is winning out. The country newspaper is sub¬ 
scribed for by the farmer too often as a matter of local pride and not be¬ 
cause there is anything in the paper. Local pride is a rather intangible 
thing for a business venture to be based upon. I suggest putting the com¬ 
petition for subscribers more nearly on a parity by bringing up the standard 
of the average country sheet. 

I know what I am going to suggest has been suggested repeatedly. I 
know there are mechanical difficulties in putting into effect some of the 
things I am going to suggest. I know that maybe regulations and statutes 
might be in the way and would require change. But even that latter 
difficulty is not insurmountable. 

The first thing that seems to me to be necessary in country town 
newspapers is that we have more morning editions. I know it means a 
lot of night work, but in doing that you will only be duplicating what the 
farmer does in farrowing and lambing time. If the farmer stands it so 
can you. It means that you will be getting to the farmer on time instead 
of giving him a lot of stuff that happened two days prior to his receipt of 
your paper, which paper gets to him about one day later than the city 
daily carrying exactly the same news. 

The farmer is metropolitan nowadays. He gets his mail mostly be¬ 
tween 9 and 12 o’clock each morning by rural carrier. He is not the hard- 
worked fool that he was supposed to be in past times. He is a man who 
wants to know the latest developments of science, sports, markets, politics. 
Why should he wait until noon today for a local daily published soon after 
noon of yesterday when he can get a city daily from Kansas City or St. 
Louis published late last night or early this morning? 

A morning paper, I confess, means all-night work for your force. 
It also means that the postmaster in your town will need to get a hustle 
on to get that mail out each morning. That is what I referred to previ¬ 
ously in regard to change of rules and regulations at Washington. The 
postmaster may need to have some new orders and some new regulations 
to be prepared to handle this morning business. 

The second thing the country publisher will have to do will be to co¬ 
operate more closely with his fellow-publishers for the purpose of bring¬ 
ing to his farmer constituents the latest reports from the big conventions, 
association meetings, and other innumerable occurrences that are con¬ 
stantly happening all over the country. I am not suggesting something 
conflicting with the great press associations. But it is significantly true 
that most of the copy supplied by such press associations relates to inci¬ 
dents of a non-agricultural nature. What is needed is to give a portion of 


30 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


your space to reports secured by Missouri small-town editors acting to¬ 
gether in a co-operative spirit and maintaining a man of mature age and 
agricultural training who will go where the farmer’s interests are being 
set forth and who will send to the co-operative publishers stories free 
from political influence and impersonal reports relative to matters that 
are of the keenest interest to farmers. 

Only by combining your resources with those of your brother pub¬ 
lishers can you hope to do for your farmer readers what each large city 
daily does alone. Some publisher here objects that such an adventure in 
country press work would cost a lot of money. Yes, it would; but the 
cost would be divided into as many parts as there are co-operators, thereby 
making the portion assessed against each publisher a mere pittance. And 
I am bold to say that this pittance would be returned more than tenfold 
in your subscription lists and the consequent advertising rates. Of course 
if you should go into such a relationship with your neighbor publishers 
and let no one know about it, the results might not be remunerative. But 
this thing of employing your special correspondent is capable of being 
played up boldly in the getting of new subscribers as well as in holding 
the old ones. 

Take the session of the Missouri General Assembly which recently 
adjourned. There was enough stuff there of a non-political nature to have 
furnished your readers with a grasp of developments which was not fur¬ 
nished from any other source. What special effort did your paper make 
to get the real dope from Jefferson City? I’ll answer for you. None. 

As a second instance where a special correspondent for the country 
papers could serve well, let me cite the forthcoming Alaskan trip of Presi¬ 
dent Harding. Not one of us in a hundred thousand knows Alaska, partic¬ 
ularly its agricultural possibilities. We need to know it industrially and 
from a metallurgical point of view, also. Our people are constantly go¬ 
ing into other regions as pioneers, and your special correspondent could 
give direction to this wanderlust as well as furnish country editors inter¬ 
esting incidents of the proposed trip. 

Your special correspondent has an almost unlimited field in Europe, 
which is now in the throes of reconstruction or destruction as the case 
may be. Farmers do not know adequately enough, I am sure, how their 
fortunes are indirectly tied up with the prosperity of Europe. Even the 
members of Congress are seeking to know by taking personal trips just 
what is going on over the sea, but it may be feared that their conclusions 
will be tainted with political bias. We know in a somewhat roundabout 
way that Europe is a determining factor in our agricultural well-being. 
But how long we must prepare ourselves to wait for its rehabilitation is 
a matter of the keenest interest to every farmer on your list of subscribers. 

And finally, in Washington City when the farm bloc was being 
created, how interesting it would have been to the farmers if someone had 


News and the Newspaper 


31 


been there sending back daily and weekly accounts of the creation of that 
organization inside the Congress of the United States, which has been so 
popular from certain points of view and equally unpopular from other 
angles. 

These few items are specified only to illustrate how the activities of 
your special correspondent could fit into the interests of your subscribers. 
This service would, with proper publicity on your part, almost compel 
the farmers to take your paper. Perhaps delinquencies would not occur 
quite so often if it were known that next week, or tomorrow, this cor¬ 
respondent would send in another report pertaining to legislative activi¬ 
ties, to the farm bloc, or to any other circumstance at that time in the 
public eye. 

The third point that I want to emphasize and to recommend for 
your consideration is that co-operative marketing is here to stay. Play it 
up. It is legitimate; it is ethical; it is economically sound; and it is 
morally right. Missouri and practically all other states have passed, are 
passing, or will pass laws legalizing various phases of co-operative mar¬ 
keting. Already Congress has done so. Why hesitate longer in giving 
your support? 

It is not your job as an editor to sit on a pedestal and say the farmers 
are all wrong about co-operative marketing. The fact is, they are very 
nearly all right. You will be wise in taking their lead and supporting them 
in their marketing efforts. If the farmers cannot make their profit from 
their products you have a mighty slim chance of getting their names on 
your subscription list. And it has been demonstrated that no one thing 
does more to make a profit for the farmer than commodity marketing. 

If the farmers want to organize around strawberries to secure for 
themselves as nearly as may be the ultimate market price, the editors 
should help them to do so. The same should be true in respect to live¬ 
stock, cotton, beans, apples or what not. It is the duty of the local 
editor te give these efforts the most unstinted support and thereby bring 
the farmer to a greater prosperity—which will react favorably upon the 
publisher, of course—as well as drawing his farmer subscribers closer 
to him. It is almost impossible to create these commodity organizations 
without the aid of publicity, which the editor is in position to give. 

Let me now mention a few thoughts of much less importance. 

It is customary for the Saturday country daily to carry a list of 
church services in the county seat. I wonder when reading these announce¬ 
ments if there are no services out in the open country. What good does 
it do to send the farmer this Saturday paper the next Monday after all the 
services in the town are over? Every county is full of little country 
Sunday services that mean just as much to their communities as do the 
more elegant places of worship to the county seat. Better run a list of 
these places of worship in your midweek edition, or not later than Friday. 


32 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


Your country people will appreciate this attention even though they all 
know just what is going to happen in Bethel, Mount Zion, Fairview, or 
whatever the name might be. I know it means work; but that is what the 
subscribers pay you for. Boost the country church; it is in a deplorable 
condition. 

Another thing; do not forget that the society event at Mrs. Wealthy’s 
is not a whit more important than the hog sale at Jim Jones’ farm the 
same day. I know it is easier to cover the society event than it is the 
hog sale, but that is not sufficient excuse for the large space devoted to 
society affairs and the complete neglect of constructive agricultural de¬ 
velopments. 

Get that local farm stuff in. How? I don’t know. That is not my 
job, but it can be done because some editors get it and theirs are the 
best papers and will continue to be. Timidity makes me hesitate to say that 
there perhaps are some half-dozen country editors in this state who are 
lazy and sit in their offices waiting for the news to drift in instead of 
going out after it. 

The final item which I wish to call to your attention is that of editorial 
comment. If you should read some of the country papers in this state 
for a whole year you would not know they had editors. You never see an 
editorial or an expression of opinion except of the boilerplate variety. 
Some editors never seem to have a thought of an original nature. Farmers 
appreciate editorial comment, whether they agree with it or not. To my 
mind editorial comment is valuable, in many cases invaluable. It re¬ 
quires a man who knows how to push a pen to write editorials that will 
stand the gaff of public examination. Editorial comment makes some 
country newspapers, but others falter along wholly without it. 


The Newspaper and the Man in Office 

By Chari.es U. Becker 
Secretary of State of Missouri, Jefferson City 

Before I came up here to talk to you I asked one of these hard-boiled 
eggs that represent the big city newspapers what I should tell you. And 
he told me to tell you people how well the newspapers report the news 
from Jefferson City. But I can’t do that, of course. I’d have to lie. 
They do print the routine news nowadays. But as to following things 
through the Legislature—they don’t do it. I have known some tragic 
things that happened in the committee room that newspapers never got. 

I think that the newspapers of the big cities devote more time and 
space to flappers, suicides, bank robberies, women who run away from 
their husbands, than they do to the real things that go on. The trouble 
with our city newspapers is that they are destructive and not constructive. 


News and the Newspaper 


33 


They will get behind a man who is running for office and help elect 
him. But as soon as he gets into office they will take a big rock and 
throw it at him. We need more constructive work. 

There are two classes of newspapers and two of the public. First 
there is a country newspaper. I had an idea that the country newspaper 
men had a good time and fine opinions of each other. Well, I have just 
found out how hateful some of these country newspaper men are—from 
listening to them talk of each other when I was making arrangements 
for printing the constitutional amendments. 

Then there is the city newspaper. It prints a lot of anything that 
you don’t want printed, and nothing that you do want printed. 

The first classification of the public consists of those who want to get 
into print and can’t. These are the biggest pests on earth. They will 
do all kinds of foolish stunts to get attention. 

The second classification consist of the people who get into print and 
don’t want to. This includes a good many politicians and other public 
officials. 

When I went into the newspaper business every man went out and 
wrote his own story. I had heard from time to time of a new idea—the 
rewrite desk. The idea finally percolated westward, and I went into it in 
St. Eouis—my first experience. 

In the old days the newspaper had individuality. Nowadays they tele¬ 
phone stuff into the main office, where there are two or three men who do 
nothing but rewrite. The result is, you have a wooden newspaper—one 
story is no different from another. 

One thing that I notice of the big city newspapers is that the editors 
do not visit the capital. One of the editors whom I worked for on the 
Kansas City Star, comes to the capital two or three times every year; also 
the editor of the Globe-Democrat. The rest of the editors do not get into 
touch with the public men. They sit at their desks from morning until 
night. They take their views at second hand, and the result is that they 
are warped in many ways. 

Editors should go out and mingle with people just the same as the 
newspaper reporters do. 


34 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


Some Neglected News Fields 

High School News 

By A. E. PrKSTon 

President, Democrat-News Printing Co., Marshall 

Realizing that in every community the schools are, perhaps, the largest 
and most worthy institutions, I asked our superintendent of schools, Mr. 
W. M. Westbrook, if there were not some way in which the press and 
schools could co-operate. He suggested the plan which I shall put before 
you. He suggested to me that I turn over each Saturday to the class in 
journalism in the high school one half-page of my daily, for which they 
should be wholly responsible. I thought the matter over and accepted the 
plan proposed. 

Miss Mary W. Fisher, who is supervisor of the high school paper, 
took charge of the school section of the Saturday issue of my paper. The 
class in journalism acted as a staff for the collection of news. The ma¬ 
terial for the school paper was printed on both sides of one half-page 
of the daily. The proper form of a newspaper was carried out in every 
detail, and when the half-page was cut out and folded it formed a paper 
which could be preserved as any other school paper. 

Miss Fisher, with a section of the class, came to the printing office 
on the day of going to press. Here they read proof, and, by pasting copy 
on an old issue of Mar-Saline, the school paper, a dummy was formed 
as a guide to the make-up man. Each Saturday we printed a six- or 
eight-page daily, the Mar-Saline forming one section. 

The Parent-Teacher Association became interested, and used the 
Mar-Saline as their publicity organ, and so were enabled to put before 
the school patrons constructive school news. This, however, was only 
one feature of the paper. The school paper was fundamentally the pub¬ 
licity medium of the school activities, and as such held a vital place in 
all |iomes. I do not think the country newspaper can better serve its com¬ 
munity than by giving publicity to church and school news. 

The section of the paper was furnished to the school free of charge, 
and, although we may have lost a few dollars on the project, yet the re¬ 
turns through advertising and appreciation shown by the community over¬ 
balanced the loss. 

In order to test our plan I prepared a questionnaire which I distributed 
to the three hundred pupils in the high school. 

To the question, “Do you approve of a school publication?” 284 of the 
300 answered “Yes”. 

“Do you enjoy reading the Mar-Saline as published in the Democrat- 
News?” 268 answered, “Yes.” 


News and the Newspaper 


35 


“Do you think publishing the Mar-Saline as a news feature in Satur¬ 
day’s Democrat-News worth while?” 265 of the 300 answered, “Yes”. 

“Do your parents read it?” 239 answered, “Yes”. 

Many parents had spoken to me favorably, but I was really surprised 
to find how popular the plan was. 

A newspaper should serve its community, and I believe in printing 
the school paper in this way I have been able through our school interests 
to draw our community closer together. 


Some Local Features 

By T. G. Thompson 

Publisher, the Shelby County Herald, Shelbyville 

As editor of a weekly newspaper in a small town, what I shall say 
will apply particularly to the weekly field. In this day of rural free de¬ 
livery and rapid mail service and other means of communication, the daily 
paper finds its way into every community, big or little, near or far, carry¬ 
ing to the farmer as well as to his city neighbor the big news of the day. 

Therefore, I do not feel that it comes within the province of the com¬ 
munity weekly newspaper to attempt to chronicle the big news and world 
events in a large way. The patron of the country weekly takes his home 
paper to get the news of his community and county. 

It is not so much the story itself, in most instances, but the way the 
story is told that makes it interesting, and while there are not exciting 
events or out-of-the-ordinary happenings in a small town every day, yet 
there are always subjects for interesting treatment. The courts, the 
schools, interviews with county officials, talks with those who have 
traveled, curious incidents preachers and doctors have run across, quaint 
rural storekeepers, the experiences of rural route men, incidents in the 
lives of old people and prominent citizens; all these furnish material for 
interesting treatment. 

Stories of children are particularly susceptible of interesting treat¬ 
ment. Only two weeks ago the biggest spelling match in the history of 
Shelby County was held at Shelbyville, in which thirty school children, 
three from each of the ten townships, participated. The idea of reviving 
the old-fashioned spelling bee was advanced and promoted by the county 
superintendent of schools. Spellers were divided into classes, according to 
their ability, and contests were held in each township to determine the 
best spellers in each of the three classes, A, B and C. These winners 
took part in the county event. Newspaper stories of the township matches 
and other preliminaries were responsible for the largest crowd that ever 
assembled in the county seat for an event of this nature. Liberal space 
was devoted to the big contest and pictures of the winners were published. 


36 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


On the same day rural graduation exercises were held and diplomas 
were presented to more than three hundred graduates. 

The boys’ and girls’ pig and calf clubs come in for their share of 
publicity, and also their poultry clubs. A majority of the subscribers to 
the country weekly are farmers and the successful paper features their 
activities. Bast year the Shelbyville Pig Club was one of the largest in 
the state. 

The raising of purebred livestock and poultry are two of the most 
important industries in Northeast Missouri and the successful breeders 
can always be depended upon to furnish interesting material for a story. 
There is one poultryman in the county in which I live, who realizes more 
than $2,500 annually from his flock of a few hundred purebred chickens. 
Interviews with him concerning the various phases of the industry always 
prove popular. 

Perhaps my most interesting human interest story about children was 
that of little twin girls living near Shelbyville, who one Christmas morning 
found themselves the possessors of thirty-eight dolls. The thought occur¬ 
red to them that perhaps Santa Claus had overlooked some little girls on 
his trip, there being so many to visit, and there might be some little girls 
right in their own county who didn’t have a single doll. So they wrote 
a letter to the editor offering to share their dollies with less fortunate 
little girls. 

The plan far exceeded their expectations, for they never dreamed that 
so many little girls were without dolls. They received scores of replies 
and were kept busy for several days getting the dolls ready and sending 
them. All but one of the writers wanted big dolls. One said she would 
be satisfied with a small doll as she had never had one. Another wanted 
a sleeping doll and as the twins had only one sleeping doll each it was. 
necessary for their father to purchase one to fill the order. One little 
miss inclosed a special delivery stamp. The saddest letter was from an 
unfortunate little girl, an orphan, who had lost both of her limbs in a 
railway accident and was a patient in a hospital. She was sent two dolls,, 
with a change of dresses and bonnets for each. 

Last summer a farmer’s chicken roost was entered and more than 100 
of his valuable chickens stolen. He discovered buggy tracks leading from 
the scene, which he declared led to the home of one of his neighbors a few 
miles away. He said the tracks made by his neighbor’s buggy and the 
tracks in the vicinity of his poultry house were identical. 

The accused man declared his innocence and his neighbors, believing 
there was no basis for the accusations made against him, offered to share 
the expense of securing bloodhounds in an effort to run down the real 
thief. The bloodhounds were sent for and picked up a trail. Scores of 
farmers and residents of Shelbyville, including the sheriff and the prose¬ 
cuting attorney, joined in the chase. The dogs followed the trail for sev- 


News and the Newspaper 


37 


eral miles, passed by the home of the accused man without a pause, and 
eventually lost the scent. Thus the young farmer was cleared. 

Shelbyville has a Checker Club, where men while away their leisure 
hours, neglect their business and are late for their meals. The town also 
boasts of one of the biggest merchants in the state—a young man 23 years 
old, almost 7 feet tall and weighing 266 pounds, formerly a resident of 
Hollywood and a star in the movies. There is in the county a man 102 
years old who has for years held a cinch on the prize awarded each year 
at the Old Settlers Reunion to the oldest man on the grounds. The pro¬ 
bate judge of Shelby County is the second oldest in point of service in 
the state of Missouri; he is now serving his twenty-fifth year. Two of 
our business men have taught classes in one of the Sunday schools for more 
than a quarter of a century. There is always material for local features 
and all the editor has to do is to put his “nose for news” into action and 
look about him. 

A great many country editors feel they haven’t time to develop their 
local features, but I think it would pay them to take time. Every story 
has a human interest side if you dig deep enough and features of this 
character are in my opinion just as valuable to the country weekly as they 
are to the metropolitan daily. 


38 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


News in Other Lands 

Foreign News Services 

By J. H. Furay 

Foreign Editor, United Press Association, New York City 

To most of us, perhaps, the phrase “foreign news service” suggests the 
American correspondent abroad covering the news of the world for 
American papers. The correspondent abroad sending news to only Ameri¬ 
can newspapers plays a very important role but the sending of news to 
American newspapers is not necessarily a correspondent’s most important 
function. He may be occupying a post wherein he is expected to cover 
the world’s news for newspapers and newspaper readers of many coun¬ 
tries. When he does that he is speaking not merely to an American audi¬ 
ence but to a world audience. 

Twenty-five years ago when the young man thought of the foreign 
correspondent abroad he visualized a rather vivid hero—a sort of com¬ 
posite of the Richard Harding Davis-William J. Locke-Phillips Oppen- 
heim hero. He knew everybody in Europe and everybody knew him. He 
had the boldness of Robin Hood, the manners of Chesterfield, the dash 
and courage of D’Artagnan and the pen of Disraeli. He was forever 
dining at the Savage or Carlton club in London or some similar exclusive 
club. He had a nice taste in wines and what the Irish call a way with 
him that was irresistible in the drawing room. A very attractive, romantic 
figure. But as we look back we cannot recall much about the news he 
wrote, unless it be stories glorifying war and the soldier’s life. 

The foreign correspondent of today is not quite like that. The for¬ 
eign correspondent of today is a man of serious bent, intent on his job, 
extremely loyal to his paper or his agency, anxious not to get scooped 
by his opposition but more anxious to get the news accurately. Of course 
there is still the color and there are the interesting contacts. But along 
with that there is just as much hard, tiring labor as any newspaper man 
does on any first-class paper in this country. Take any first-class reporter 
of your acquaintance who does his work intelligently and well, and you 
have the material for a foreign correspondent. Add the necessary special 
training and knowledge that is acquired by experience and you have the 
foreign correspondent. 

It is necessary for the foreign correspondent to be familiar with all 
possible transmission routes from the country to which he is assigned and 
to know their condition at all times. Having such knowledge or not hav¬ 
ing it, often is the difference between scoring a scoop and being crushingly 
beaten. Lines of transmission in this country are so well prepared and 
maintained that we rarely encounter serious delays. Not so in Europe. 


News and the Newspaper 


39 


It does not do your paper any good to have the best story in the 
world and not be able to get rid of it quickly. You can be all dressed 
up, but if you have no place to go you are out of luck, if you will pardon 
the slang phrase. 

But sometimes a correspondent has the most amazing luck. Some 
years ago when King Alfonso of Spain was married newspapers all over 
the world sent special men. An anarchist threw a bomb at the king’s 
carriage. Several soldiers were killed, though the king was unhurt. 

All the correspondents hurried to the cable office. One American cor¬ 
respondent unfortunately was caught in the crowd and was absolutely 
the last to file his dispatch. Just as soon as the tragedy occurred the govern¬ 
ment clapped down a censorship and the censor, a rather careless, unintelli¬ 
gent fellow, receiving the cablegrams filed by the correspondents, put them 
on a hook, one on top of the other. When it was) found the king was 
unhurt the censorship was raised, and the careless censor picked the dis¬ 
patches off the hook and sent them in exactly reverse order. So the 
American was astonished to get a cable from his home office congratulat¬ 
ing him on the fine beat he had scored. 

The war made many changes. Among other things it rang down the 
curtain on the old romantic, rather swashbuckling war correspondent and 
ushered in the war reporter. Newspaper men who covered that conflict 
came out of it enormously sobered and without any lingering illusions 
about war as a glorious business. They saw it with all the trappings and 
pomp stripped off. They saw it as a terrible, bloody, ghastly thing, a 
chamber of horrors from which they were glad to escape. 

And they found, too, that what their readers wanted to read was what 
they could most readily understand—the things which came nearest to 
touching their daily lives. The technical stories of high and wonderful 
strategy were over the heads of many readers, but the simple story of 
what the front-line trenches looked like to John Smith of Sedalia or the 
story of the love of home of the French peasant who refused to leave 
his patch of ground when the war approached him were understandable 
and real things. Sir Philip Gibbs of the London Chronicle achieved notable 
success as a war reporter because he wrote in simple, direct English the 
thing he saw. And the thing he saw was not the war of glorious romance, 
a stirring, wonderful adventure, but a deadly, grim, soulless, devastating 
business that seared and killed everything with which it came into con¬ 
tact. 

Among the difficulties which face any correspondent abroad are cen¬ 
sorship and its twin evil, propaganda. These are two rocks on which 
many a fine news ship has split. The idea of censorship is repugnant to 
our American ideals of free speech. We know little about it because even 
in time of war we had it only in the form of voluntary repression. 

Voltaire well summarized our American viewpoint with regard to 


40 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


free speech and censorship when he wrote to a political opponent: “I 
do not agree in the least with anything you say, but I will defend with 
my life your right to say it”. But in many countries abroad censorship 
is a real daily question to be considered. 

Censorship often hides the truth. At this moment, for example, 
nobody knows with certainty whether Lenin, the head of the Soviets, is 
alive or dead. The Soviet government has been announcing his tempera¬ 
ture and pulse daily, but there is no certainty that he is actually alive. 

Propaganda put out by some governments for foreign consumption, 
in which the truth is distorted or entirely suppressed, is a danger which 
the correspondent must be prepared to meet. There is something peculiarly 
evil about such propaganda. The insidious mixing of fact and opinion 
in such a manner as to make the opinion appear to be the fact seems like 
poisoning the wells of news at their sources or like putting sleeping drops 
in a man’s drink. Nations which stoop to such practices are those which 
fear the effect of truth. 

There are two distinct phases of American foreign news service: 
One is bringing to the United States the news of the rest of the world, and 
the other is supplying other countries of the world with the news not 
only of America but of other countries outside of the particular country 
served. In serving countries outside of America with a world news serv¬ 
ice, it is vital to understand the differences between American news 
tastes and the news tastes of other countries. At a recent newspaper 
dinner in New York, eminent speakers dwelt earnestly on the duty of 
the American press to bring to its readers the news of the serious and 
weighty things of the world, and to eliminate the frothy and 
frivolous things. Will Rogers, the comedian, listened to these addresses 
and when his turn to speak arrived remarked that although he isn’t a 
newspaper man he would venture to say that what American newspaper 
readers like to read is the things they most readily understand. They are 
interested, he said, in the lady who won the latest dancing marathon, how 
many shoes, stocking and partners she wore out, and in such soul-stirring 
questions as: Can Babe Ruth hit a fast one low on the inside of the 
plate, and how far? 

But whether Rogers is right or wrong, what Americans like to read 
about in their newspapers is not necessarily what the readers of other 
countries are interested in. 

During the war a filing editor in New York received a wonderful 
human interest story from France describing a cross-section of the front, 
the shelling of an old French peasant’s house which was directly on the 
British line. It described how hardened British Tommies, under shellfire, 
had milked the peasant’s cow. It was a vivid, graphic picture of the war. 
The New York filing editor, thrilled by the story, cabled it in full to 
South America, feeling pleased with himself. The next day he received 


News and the Newspaper 


41 


from his associate in Buenos Aires a cable referring to the story and 
adding: “Hereafter eliminate similar bunk. We don’t desire cowmilk- 
ings”. 

Last year there was held in Washington a conference between Peru¬ 
vian and Chilean delegates to settle the dispute over the provinces of 
Tacna and Arica—the Alsace-Lorraine of South America. North Amer¬ 
ican newspapers paid little attention to that story, which lasted two months, 
yet the newspapers of South America required on that single story from 
1,500 to 3,000 words of closely condensed cable news daily. And there 
was one day when the official Spanish text of the minutes of the sessions 
was given out, which totaled 6,500 words. It had to be sent in full. 

A year ago nobody in the boxing world in this country had ever 
heard of Luis Firpo, the giant Argentine boxer. He was champion of 
South America, which meant nothing to us. He was so obscure that 
when he came to the United States we had to hunt for a week in Jersey 
City boarding houses before we found him. He boxed with some unknown 
in Jersey City last year and the bout was witnessed by perhaps 500 persons. 
No New York newspaper even mentioned it. Yet it was necessary for 
us to cover that fight as carefully and almost as voluminously by cable 
as the Dempsey-Carpentier fight. And ten days ago when Firpo fought 
in New York, the entire fight by rounds had to be covered at the urgent 
cable rate of $1.50 a word. 

Another instance. Two years ago Lasker and Capablanca played a 
match in Havana to decide the world’s chess championship. Now chess 
is an ancient and noble game, but not many of us know enough about 
it to become agitated over a match. Yet the newspapers of Buenos Aires 
instructed us to cover each match—more than twenty were scheduled— 
not merely at the press rate but at the urgent rate, move by move. And 
even that wasn’t fast enough, so one Buenos Aires newspaper built a pri¬ 
vate wire from the Havana casino to the Havana cable office to save a 
few minutes on each move. 

The money expenditure involved on behalf of those papers was enor¬ 
mous. 

When the combined French and American divisions began their drive 
against the Marne salient in 1918, three or four American divisions were 
operating with the French. A filing editor in New York received a 
graphic story of the attack by the American troops. He cabled to South 
America so much of it that he did not have much room left for the 
activities on other fronts. It happened that the story was a three-hour 
beat in this country, so the jubilant filing editor cabled his associate in 
Buenos Aires and called attention to the beat. The response he got 
read: “We had a beat here, too, but remember the French and British 
are also in the war”. 

There is no doubt that the work of a foreign correspondent makes 


42 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


a strong appeal to young men everywhere. It is only natural that this 
should be so, especially in our own country. The descendents of the pio¬ 
neers who wrested from the wilderness our Middle West and made it 
the fairest land in the world would not be true sons of those pioneers if 
the spirit of adventure were not in their blood. 

And perhaps that is the reason why so many young men of the Middle 
West have succeded well in the foreign field. They have imagination and 
vision, and these are essential to success in the foreign field. Without 
them, the correspondent abroad can scarcely appreciate fully his responsi¬ 
bilities not alone to the organization which employs him but to the world 
at large, the great body of newspaper readers everywhere who depend upon 
him to give them the world’s news fairly and accurately. 

For the operation of a world-wide news service means the bringing 
of the peoples of the world closer together. By this is not meant the 
governments of the world, but the peoples—the man in the street in the 
United States and the man in the street in England and in Japan and in 
France and in Argentina and in South Africa. Enlarge and increase the 
channels of communication between peoples, and something has been done 
to make the world better. Freer interchange of information between 
countries will make for a better understanding by each. From such in¬ 
creased understanding better relations should flow and the chances of 
national and international misunderstandings and their evil consequences 
should be lessened. 

The vision of a future when international communications will have 
been made easy and exchanges of information will have brought the 
world’s peoples into much closer contact and sympathy with each other, 
is the great dominating ideal of those who today are striving in the field 
of foreign news service. 

The realization of that ideal will not come in our day and generation, 
but it does not seem too visionary to hope that one day it will come. To 
hasten that day, even a little, is to contribute something to the world’s 
moral progress. And surely no newspaper man could ask a monument 
mofe enduring than that. 


An American Reporter in China 

By Frank H. Hedges 

Peking Correspondent, the Japan Advertiser and the Philadelphia Public 

Ledger. 

When a Britisher or American or English-speaking Japanese or Chinese 
meets an American newspaper man in the Orient, the first question is: 
“Are you from Missouri, too?” I think there must be about fifteen or 
twenty of us Missourians in newspaper work in the Far East now. An- 


News and the Newspaper 


43 


other fifteen or twenty who have been there are back in this country or 
in Europe. 

In Tokio, also, I know from personal experience that practically all 
Japanese who have not been in this country—and also the bulk of the 
British there—believe that the two greatest American Universities in 
every way are Harvard and the University of Missouri. There is no 
question about it. The former managing editor of the Advertiser, now its 
London correspondent, Mr. Hugh Byas, a Scotchman, who has one of the 
finest brains I have ever come into contact with, was convinced that Har¬ 
vard and Missouri were the two great schools in the United States. 

And when it comes to journalism it is necessary to leave Harvard out. 

It is difficult in this talk not to take both China and Japan into con¬ 
sideration, though they are more different than they are alike. There 
are greater differences between China and Japan than there are between 
us and any European nation. It is true, of course, that the bulk of Jap¬ 
anese civilization finds its roots in ancient Chinese culture. But de¬ 
velopment has been along individual lines and there are as great differ¬ 
ences between the two cultures today as there are between ours and the 
German—although the roots of both lie in Greece and Palestine. 

In Peking the newspaper man is a personage. The Chinese govern¬ 
ment realizes the importance and value of the news that goes out from 
China. All of the younger element in the government and in the uni¬ 
versities and in business life are modern, and are much concerned as to 
the impressions that go out with regard to China. Because of that, they do 
all they can to enable American correspondents to obtain accurate infor¬ 
mation. When there is a president’s reception, invitations often go out 
only to diplomats and newspaper men. 

Peking has not been developed as a news field. The runs have not 
been built up. The legation run has. You can go to the American lega¬ 
tion, where the American correspondents go every day except Sunday. All 
reports are placed at our disposal, and any information that the American 
legation may have that is not of a secret nature, is given to the newspaper 
men. The source of information is not quoted. 

The same is true of the Japanese legation. Of course, there is more 
at the Japanese legation that they feel they cannot tell us. That is all 
right; we do our best to find it out somewhere else. The British legation 
is less helpful. They tell us the reason is that they do not have enough 
secretaries to take care of us. German, French, and other legations co-op¬ 
erate fully with us. 

At the foreign office in Peking there was formerly an undersecretary 
assigned to see newspaper men once a week. He was very courteous, very 
agreeable. He received us, served tea and was a perfect host—but we 
learned nothing. He was willing to talk, but he knew nothing that we 
wanted. 


44 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


Last fall there was just as big a bandit story as is now appearing on 
the front pages of the papers but it was not quite so spectacular. This 
secretary knew absolutely nothing about it when we interviewed him. He 
did not know what steps the government was taking to release the captives. 
We asked to see the foreign minister, who that month was Dr. Wellington 
Koo. The secretary threw up his hands. . . . The minister might be 

able to see us next Friday, he said. We persisted, saying we would hold 
up our cablegrams for four hours. Doctor Koo saw us at 4 p. m. And 
from that time on the foreign minister has seen us regularly. He knows 
the situation and he is not afraid of trespassing on authority in what he 
says. He has also changed his press secretary, giving us a man who 
really knows things, is not afraid to talk about them and who is available 
at any hour of the day. It has made a vast difference. 

But after all, the chief source of news is individual friends you make 
among those who are in a position to know what is going on, just as it 
is in this country. It is necessary to make real friends of men of that 
type. 

I happen to remember such an incident a year ago last Christmas, 
during the Washington Conference, when news from China was more im¬ 
portant than ordinarily. The premier had resigned, and the appointment 
of a new premier was expected almost hourly. America was much inter¬ 
ested. On Christmas eve, while I was at a picture show, I got a tele¬ 
phone call during the intermission. I did not know more than enough 
Chinese to get my food—but I had a pretty good idea it was about the 
appointment of a new premier. I got the story and cabled it, thus getting 
a twelve-hour scoop. This was only because my friend, the: premier’s 
secretary, had taken the trouble to telephone me at the picture show in¬ 
stead of waiting for business hours next morning. 

It is easy to get news in Peking, but it is difficult to know when it is 
true. Most of it is not. 

Peking is a city of rumor. Political changes occur almost weekly. 
Everyone follows the political situation and everyone has his own fav¬ 
orite slate in predicting what is to happen next. 

I think probably the most important thing for the foreign correspondent 
in the Far East is to get a cultural background of the country—a difficult 
task, by the way. If you know something of the culture of China, of the 
material that enters into Chinese thought, you are in a position to follow 
the trend of Chinese thought, and that is the only way, I think, to sort 
the false from the true. 

There is a lure and glamour to life in the Far East that has vanished 
from many parts of the world. I think no one, not even the idler, feels 
this more keenly than does the journalist. To give that lure and glamour 
to America is a part of the work of the correspondent, but it is only a 
part. To record the political changes in the republic is also only a part. 


News and the Newspaper 


45 


To tell of the changes that are coming in Chinese life, not only through 
China’s contact with the West but through the natural evolution of her 
own culture, is also one part of his work. 

The real task of the American correspondent in the Far East is to 
mirror life as it is lived in the Far East so that it may be understandable 
to the West. I believe that most of the American newspaper men in the 
Far East realize their task; not one of them is fulfilling it. I do not lay 
the blame primarily on the correspondent but on his home office, on the 
news agency or newspaper which he represents. 

Most spot news is not properly understandable in this country un¬ 
less it has a background with it. But the agencies and newspapers want 
only spot news. 

If tomorrow a story came from China of a renewal of war near 
Peking between Marshal Chang Tso-lin and General Wu Pei-fu, the pic¬ 
ture coming to American readers would be a comparison of Eee marching 
on Washington or Grant on Richmond. There is no such analogy. There 
are perhaps 200,000 or 300,000 men involved. The only men who suffer 
are those farmers whose crops are trampled and the merchants whose 
shops are looted. To the bulk of Chinese it makes no difference. Office 
holders in Peking change—that is all. A different set of officials does 
not mean any change in foreign of domestic policy. 

There is less change, as a rule, than there is in this country when we 
switch from a Republican to a Democratic administration. The corre¬ 
spondent who merely gives the spot news is not giving a fair picture. 
Most of the correspondents want to give the fair picture—but the papers 
will not pay the cable tolls (21 cents a word). 

The American paper, to my mind, has lost something valuable through 
its emphasis on the time element. 

The misinformation of American newspapers on the Far East is 
tragic. We know Europe. No editorial writer would attempt to write 
an editorial on Bonar Raw’s resignation, for instance, without knowledge 
of the situation; but in reading the editorials on this recent Chinese ban¬ 
dit outrage, I found just two which showed that the writer was intelli¬ 
gently informed on the subject. 

If I have any sort of message to give, it is this: That you demand 
from the news agency supplying your Far Eastern service more of this 
background material by mail, and that you then call up your courage—and 
it will take courage—to give space in your papers to this slower, heavier 
copy. 


46 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


Some Observations on Journalism in the Orient 

By Oscar E. RieEy 
New York City 

The winning of a daily circulation of 50,000 in its first year is the 
achievement of the English Osaka Mainichi. This little four-page paper 
circulates throughout the Empire, although its chief field is Osaka, the 
St. Eouis of Japan. 

A bright future lies aheacj of the newspaper, as it serves a wealthy 
city of factories and wholesale houses with a population of 1,252,000, 
almost all interested in learning more English. This is especially true of 
students, as English is compulsory in the high schools of Japan. The en¬ 
tire staff of this daily is Japanese except for two copy readers, one Amer¬ 
ican and one Scotch. The subscription cost is 40 cents a month, a price 
which students can afford to pay. 

East month the Tokio Mainichi was launched in the capital of Japan, 
a city of 2,173,000. Its initial issue bore greetings from President Hard¬ 
ing, Frederick Roy Martin of the Associated Press, President Karl Bickel 
of the United Press and Secretary Herbert Hoover. 

New competition thus enters the field of the Japan Advertiser, which 
for the last ten years has been staffed almost exclusively with graduates 
of this School of Journalism. However, the Japan Advertiser thrives on 
competition. 

The respect of American newspapermen for the press of Japan must 
be enhanced by stories such as that of the success achieved by the Mainichi, 
which by the way means simply “daily”. 

This respect also must be deepened when it is recalled that Japanese 
newspapers have to surmount many of the obstacles which used to con¬ 
front the American press. 

Distances are great in Tokio, as in all cities of several million people; 
yet there are no subways and the trams make rather slow time. Rickishas 
are expensive and taxicabs are prohibitive, of course, except for the 
exceptional story. Large staffs of reporters thus are required to follow 
through news tips and much time is consumed on one complicated story. 

The telephone is not found so universally there, and it takes longer 
to get put through. 

There are three to four thousand characters in use in a Japanese 
newspaper. This means a veritable army of typesetters. The printers, 
however, have a lower wage scale. The printing machines, as they are 
called in Japan, are the great American presses with which we are all 
familiar. Ink costs more in Japan, being imported from New England. 
Paper costs less, as it is made in great mills in Japan. 

Cable tolls are outrageous. A column of foreign news in a Japanese 


News and the Newspaper 


47 


newspaper costs as much in wireless or cable tolls as does an entire page 
in a New York newspaper. 

The foreign news coming from Japanese stationed in America or 
Europe reaches Tokio in English in skeletonized form. English is neces¬ 
sarily used to avert mistakes in transmission. 

In the Tokio Asahi office, for instance, these cables are expanded and 
translated into Japanese. The story translated, an editor in Tokio gets the 
Osaka Asahi on the leased telephone wire. An editor in Osaka repeats 
each word he hears over the telephone and a Japanese girl seated near by 
takes it down in shorthand. Still another Japanese girl takes these steno¬ 
graphic notes and writes them in longhand, ready to go to the foreign 
editor. The foreign news editors, by the way, have invariably served as 
correspondents abroad. 

Summing up, it is seen that the Japanese publisher must have many 
more reporters and typesetters than an American publisher having an even 
larger daily, and also has heavier cable tolls. 

The Japanese publisher, however, is still able to make a handsome 
profit. He does this by keeping the daily down to eight pages, or rarely 
ten, and by charging a subscription rate of 55 to 60 cents a month, which 
is ample to pay all expenses and leave a comfortable margin for dividends. 
The receipts from advertising are thus virtually all profit. 

There is a Japanese adage which tells much in two words, “Shikai 
Dobo.” The meaning is: “All the people within the four seas are 
brothers.” Certainly this is true of newspaper people. When an American 
newspaper man considers the handicaps to accuracy in slow telephone 
service and slow transit, then he must say that the Japanese newspaper 
fraternity is handling the news end very well. In fact, in no country is 
the reporter or news editor more in love with his craftsmanship and his 
profession. 

The Japanese editorial writers come from the ranks of selected re¬ 
porters who have served as correspondents in a foreign post. These 
Japanese editorial writers are young and enthusiastic and attack right 
and left whenever reforms come too slowly to suit them. In this respect 
they differ from some of the more patient, elderly American editors, who 
waste no ammunition, but make each shot tell. 

The attitude of Japanese editorial writers toward us may be best 
shown by quoting President Raita Fujiyama of the National Federation 
of Chambers of Commerce of Japan. In addressing the Chamber of Com¬ 
merce of the United States week before last, he said: “I may call your 
attention to the fact that during the late war, our Japanese press made 
a distinction between America and the other countries with whom we 
were associated* by referring to our European comrades-in-arms as ‘Allies’ 
but to the Americans as ‘Our Best Friends’.” 


48 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


News in Our Capitals 

Reporting a Legislature 

By Asa Hutson 
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat 

Legislative reporting does not differ essentially from other repor- 
torial work except that the reporting of the General Assembly requires a 
somewhat more intimate knowledge of the workings of the state govern¬ 
ment. 

Legislative reporting, like any other kind of news gathering, requires 
initiative, head work, and much leg work. Let me say here that leg work— 
being where things are happening at the time they are happening—is just 
as essential and important as either head work or initiative. 

The poorest reporter, I think, is the one who sits in his comfortable 
chair, and waits for the news to come in. The best newspaper accounts 
of any happening spring from actual contact with it. 

Legislative correspondents, if they do their duty by their newspapers 
and the public, if they try to present anything like a fair picture of the 
General Assembly, must be tireless. Reporters who insist upon getting 
their meals at exact hours and enjoying long stretches of beauty sleep 
are likely to receive few letters of commendation from their managing 
editors. 

It is the duty of the legislative correspondent to study and analyze 
legislation under consideration and to inform the public of its purposes. 
It is his duty to point out the bad features of a pending bill as well as 
the good features. The correspondent must be free to write fearlessly 
after he gathers his facts and verifies them. Some of the things which 
the people are entitled to know about an important measure radically- 
changing existing laws, are: its sponsors? its opponents? its purposes? 
and its probable effects? 

Incidentally let me add that the legislative reporter, and I think this 
may be said with equal propriety of other reporters, must steer clear of 
improper influences. The reporter who permits himself to get under obli¬ 
gations to any person or organization seeking or opposing legislation can¬ 
not render his paper fair and impartial service. 

To the credit, however, of Missouri newspaper reporters, and I have 
made the acquaintance of many during an employment of seventeen years; 
on the Globe-Democrat, their influence is not for sale. During all of my 
experience I have known only two or three reporters whom I even sus¬ 
pected of having accepted money, promises of political jobs, or other- 
valuable things, to write or not write a given set of facts. I can conceive 


News and the Newspaper 


49 


of no more pathetic object than a newspaper reporter who is unable when 
a big news story breaks to handle it fearlessly. 

The legislative reporter—and for that matter any other reporter— 
must be fair to be effective. It never pays to distort a fact to bolster 
up a wobbly story. We reporters make enough harmful and ridiculous 
errors in cur stories through inadvertence without making them deliber¬ 
ately. Right here, let me add that it is my judgment that the great bulk 
of reporters try earnestly to write the facts. No reputable newspaper ever 
instructed its reporters to be unfair—to distort a fact—or to injure un- 
warrantedly a reputation, although I have heard this charged by candidates 
and political demagogues and others who should have better judgment. 

Publishers of newspapers want to print all the facts about things that 
are fit to print. They are not courting libel suits and expense; neither do 
they desire their paper to get a reputation for inaccuracy and unfairness. 

No reporter should jump at conclusions. Grave injustice, libel suits, 
and other things which newspapers want to avoid, arise from jumping at 
conclusions without making necessary inquiries. It has been my ex¬ 
perience that many legislative situations, which on their face appeared 
wrong and even criminal, were found upon investigation to be harmless. 
But, let me say, when a reporter, after investigation, discovers something 
illegal, something wrong, or something criminal, it is his duty to expose 
it. If the facts as gathered are not conclusive and complete it is his duty 
to lay the results of his inquiries before the proper law officer and to print 
the developments, if any occur. That I think is the course pursued by the 
average reporter. 

Instances of dishonesty, petty graft and that sort of thing may be 
found in every Legislature, but they are incidents and will be with us as 
long as weak or selfish men are put into positions of responsibility. I 
hasten to say that the great bulk of lawmakers and other public officials 
whom I have known, are average men, honest, and anxious to serve the 
people as efficiently and as faithfully as they can. 

I think it may be fairly stated that Missouri newspapers are an im¬ 
portant factor in the molding of legislation. I think it can also be said 
that newspapers exercise a constructive and helpful force in every Legis¬ 
lature. Newspapers are a greater factor in shaping and molding legisla¬ 
tion than the public generally appreciates. Newspapers must rely very 
largely for information about important legislation upon their correspond¬ 
ents. From the correspondent they get the background of the bill, what 
it is about, its probable effect, and its purposes. 

It has been my observation based upon an experience with legisla¬ 
tures dating back as far as 1909 that no measure consistently fought by 
the Missouri newspapers has ever become a law, and no bill of conse¬ 
quence which they actively supported has failed ultimately to become a 
law. 


50 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


Whatever the public may think about newspapers, I think it can be 
said that the newspapers do not advocate legislation which does not seem 
to them right and in the public interest. 

I do not mean that newspapers and newspaper reporters and editors 
are infallible. They are just average men and women. But they touch 
life at many angles and they have a better opportunity of getting facts 
than the average man or woman. 

The legislative committee is the crucible of legislation. There the op¬ 
ponents and proponents of a measure are privileged to express their op¬ 
position or advocacy. The legislative correspondent must pay close atten¬ 
tion to committee hearings, for in the committees the bills are threshed 
into shape with amendments, rewritten, or smothered. Many a bill dies 
by the last route. The chairman of the committee, with the connivance 
of its members, or a majority of them, simply locks the bill in his desk 
and forgets about it. 

The discussion upon bills in committee lays bare their purposes and 
probable effects. It is in committee that the legislative reporter gets the 
background of legislation, without which what he writes will be colorless. 

Bills which attract greatest attention in the Legislature are those deal¬ 
ing with public morals. A bill to censor motion pictures, which was 
considered by the last Legislature, attracted throngs so great that it re¬ 
quired the Hall of Representatives to hold them. Public health measures, 
measures affecting the relations of employer and employe, and those af¬ 
fecting radically the conduct of business also draw crowds. 

But the number of people who come to Jefferson City during a legis¬ 
lative session, or who petition the lawmakers to do or not do a thing pro¬ 
posed, are negligible when compared with the great bulk of Missouri peo¬ 
ple who go about their business depending upon the Legislature to do what 
is best and depending upon the newspapers to give information as to what 
is being done. 

Nestling among the hundreds of other bills in the legislative hopper 
are the so-called sandbag bills, which have for their purpose the extor 
tion of money, if possible, from the interests whose business would be 
affected injuriously. A few sandbaggers appear at every session. They 
are a veritable subpoena to the interest affected. The sandbaggers are 
permitted to die when their purpose is served. Members sometimes intro¬ 
duce them unwittingly at the request of some designing person who thus 
sets up machinery for a shakedown. It is said that men have had sand bag 
bills introduced in order to come to Jefferson City on a fee to lobby against 
them. The sandbag bill is bad but the member who deliberately stoops 
to the introduction of one is worse. 

The Legislature and lobbyists are inseparable. The term “lobbyist” 
is applied to men and women who haunt the legislative halls and commit- 


News and the Newspaper 


51 


tee rooms and hotel lobbies to oppose or urge the passage of particular 
bills. 

There are various kinds of lobbyists. There are the groups of good 
women urging the passage of bills to strengthen the child labor laws, to 
remove the civil disabilities of women, to give them equal political repre¬ 
sentation on party committees, to shorten the hours of labor for members of 
their sex, to regulate their wages and working conditions, to protect the 
public morals and public health and to give little children their chance to 
grow up in healthful environments. Women’s clubs and groups usually 
are represented by an active lobby skilled in the arts of lobbying, and for 
patience, diligence and efficiency one cannot help but admire them. Their 
work is wholly unselfish. Their measures frequently are impracticable 
but their intent is always good. 

Then there are the insurance lobbyists, railroad lobbyists, salary-in¬ 
crease lobbyists, job-creating lobbyists and the relief-bill lobbyists. The 
legislature corridors are abuzz with lobbyists all the time. 

The paid lobbyist living in affluence in an expensive suite at the best 
hotel—the wily, oily lobbyist, who covers his tracks, who deceives as to 
his purpose, who never appears before committees, but does his work 
secretly, furtively—he also is there. His are the footsteps which the leg¬ 
islative reporter should trail. 

The names of such lobbyists never appear upon the lobby re'gister in 
the secretary of state’s office. Only the harmless lobbyists register in that 
book. The law requiring lobbyists to register and state their purposes in 
Jefferson City was enacted upon the recommendation of former Governor 
Folk to break up a powerful railroad lobby which then infested the cap¬ 
ital. The law did not break up the railroad lobby, but the force of public 
opinion did dissolve it during the succeeding administration, that of for¬ 
mer Governor Hadley. 

Do not despise the lobbyist. He performs a useful work, even though 
it be selfish. Many a bad bill has received its quietus through his efforts. 
And the skilled lobbyist of today does not come to Jefferson City with 
his pockets bulging with $1,000 bills. The lobbyist is most successful whose 
cause is right, and next is the one who can pull the greatest number of 
political wires. But the lobbyist with the $1,000 bills, I think, is about ex¬ 
tinct. There are more effective methods of approach. The railroad- 
pass lobbyist also has gone. 

Make the acquaintance of lobbyists—all that you can. They are useful 
sources of information. Lobbyists are accustomed to tell each other their 
troubles and thus a lobbyist becomes a veritable repository of useful 
legislative information. Many a legislative reporter got his first tip on a 
good story from a disinterested, or for that matter interested, lobbyist. 

One of the unfortunate things in connection with the legislative lobby 
is that state educational institutions are compelled to lobby for their ap- 


52 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


propriations. It is my judgment that this situation should be changed 
through the amendment of the constitution providing a direct tax for 
the support of public education in Missouri. 

In legislative and political reporting the elements of acquaintance fig¬ 
ure largely. Another important factor that must be considered is the 
question of keeping faith with persons from whom information is ob¬ 
tained in confidence. Acquaintance brings to the reporter a knowledge 
of political alignments without which in some political situations his news 
will be colorless. 

Political reporters know vastly more about candidates and public 
officials than they write. However distinguished the candidate or official, 
the smoking car and the hotel lobby bring out traits of character which 
are frequently as surprising as they are disillusioning. 

But the reporter is concerned only with the public life of the candi¬ 
date. He does not bother about personal habits unless these become the 
target for public comment, and such comments must be made with formality 
before the political reporter will write anything about them. 


The Washington Assignment 

By J. Fred Essary 

Washington Correspondent, the Baltimore Sun 

I wonder if you realize the extent of the news field of Washington as 
it has developed with the growth of governmental activities, or have 
stopped to consider the enormous volume of news printed in American 
newspapers under Washington datelines. This is accounted for by the 
fact that Washington is no longer a political center merely. The federal 
government has reached far afield in recent years and has drawn practically 
all national interests toward the capital. This centralization extends to 
the railroads, which are largely controlled through the Interstate Com¬ 
merce Commission; to banking and credit, which are controlled through 
the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury; to foreign and domestic cofn- 
merce, which maintain constant contact with the Department of Com¬ 
merce; to ordinary businesses, which are regulated through the Federal 
Trade Commission; to labor, which is represented in the Cabinet itself 
by the Department of Labor; to American shipping, which is dominated 
by the Shipping Board; and so on down the line. 

Practically every great national interest has its nerve center in Wash¬ 
ington, either in Congress or in the administrative departments of the 
government, thereby broadening enormously that field of news-gathering. 

Moreover, Washington has become the great center of propaganda, 
political, religious, social and industrial. This propaganda is carrie'd on 
by literally scores of national organizations. The mail of Washington 


News and the Newspaper 


53 


correspondents is filled daily with propaganda from these sources and 
much of it is so skillfully prepared that it has genuine news value. 

The federal government itself is engaged in propaganda. Every exec¬ 
utive department is seeking publicity. In virtually every department there 
is a chief of the bureau of information, which is merely a polite title for 
a departmental press agent. The boards and commissions of the govern¬ 
ment have press representatives, and even the members of the House 
and Senate who can afford such a luxury, engage the services of former 
newspaper men or professional press agents to keep them favorably be¬ 
fore the public. 

The development of Washington correspondence has been coeval 
with the development of American newspapers themselves. In the earlier 
days there were no Washington correspondents as we now know them. 
Editors of newspapers journeyed periodically to the nondescript, hand¬ 
made little town on the Potomac to write occasional letters to their papers, 
all of them in vigorous editorial style and few of them intended to re¬ 
veal any actual news. Such were James Gordon Bennett, the elder; John 
Howard Payne, who is best remembered as the author of “Home, Sweet 
Home” ; Horace Greeley; Ben Perley Poore, whose published reminiscences 
cover a sixty-year period from the administration of John Quincy Adams 
to the first administration of Grover Cleveland; Henry J. Raymond, 
George D. Prentiss, and Henry Watterson. All of them were of the old 
school of Washington editorial correspondents. 

So varied are the interests with which we deal in Washington and 
so broad the field that the specialist has come upon our small stage, as in 
our home offices. There are men who make a special study of foreign af¬ 
fairs, a phase of work that has assumed far greater importance in recent 
years, notwithstanding our pretended isolation. I have in mind Edwin M. 
Hood, the international expert of the Associated Press Bureau, who has 
been the unofficial adviser and confidant of half a score of Secretaries of 
State. I have in mind another specialist, A. E. Heiss, correspondent of 
the Daily Traffic World, who knows more about Interstate Commerce mat¬ 
ters than does any member of the commission perhaps. I have in mind 
the late Charles S. Albert, of the New York World Bureau, who was a 
wizard on legislative procedure. I have in mind Roy A. Roberts, corre¬ 
spondent of the Kansas City Star, who writes more understanding^ on 
agricultural matters than any other man I know. Specialization of this 
character is the logical evolution of talent at play in a field so wide and 
deep as our own. 

Journalism in Washington long ago achieved official recognition, first 
at the hands of Congress, and thereafter at the hands of the executive 
departments. Rules governing the press galleries of the House and Senate 
were originally laid down by committees of those bodies, but as the corps 
of correspondents expanded, and as necessity arose for a careful examina- 


54 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


tion of the credentials of the writers claiming the privileges of the gal¬ 
leries, the newspaper men were authorized by congressional enactment to 
elect a standing committee of their own number whose first duty it would 
be to pass upon all credentials presented; whose next duty it would be to 
regulate the conduct of their colleagues occupying the galleries; and, 
finally, who would provide a means of official contact between the legisla¬ 
tive bodies and the men assigned to report the proceedings of those bodies. 

This recognition, let it be stated, does not involve any censorship, direct 
or indirect, over the correspondents. There is no such censorship in Wash¬ 
ington, and there has been none except that voluntarily submitted to by the 
men during the period of the war. And I might add right here that the 
censorship of that period is a tribute to the professional integrity of the 
five hundred or more men who fought the war on their typewriters in 
Washington. There was scarcely a day during that time when we did 
not receive in confidence, military and naval secrets which would have 
been invaluable to the enemy. We knew week by week how many men 
were being landed in France and the identity of the troops. We knew 
in detail the system of convoy of the transports. We knew how many 
naval vessels were engaged in the anti-submarine campaign off the Irish 
coast and how many naval units were in the North Sea. We knew of 
the great project to blockade the German submarine base by a mine bar¬ 
rage from its very inception. And we knew of these things and countless 
others, not by snooping around the War and Navy departments, not by 
burrowing in, but direct from the men in command. This vital informa¬ 
tion came straight from the Secretary of War or the chief of staff of the 
army, and from the Secretary of the Navy and his chief of operations. 

Not one time from first to last, so far as I know, was one breach of 
faith committed. Although we were in possession of highly important 
facts which would have made big first-page news, we guarded those facts 
as jealously as if they had been family skeletons and even debated the 
propriety of confiding so much as a line of what we knew to our own 
editors. 

This censorship, be it remembered, was self-imposed. There was no 
law to enforce it. The Creel committee was there, it is true, but its mis¬ 
sion was to release publishable news, now to suppress that which was not 
publishable. The government guarded all cable and wireless communica¬ 
tion to prevent information of value to the enemy from getting out of the 
country, but no such guard stood over the wires radiating out of Wash¬ 
ington. None was necessary. American newspaper writers were patriots 
and needed no over-lord to dictate or to delete their stories. All they 
needed was a measure of guidance as to material which should or should 
not be used and the government set up an efficient organization to provide 
that guidance. 

Nor was the wartime conduct of Washington correspondents more 


News and the Newspaper 


55 


to their credit than was the conduct of American newspapers in general. 
Practically all of them suppressed their enthusiasm for big vital news 
when it involved anything which the enemy might seize upon. Thousands 
of stories of one sort or another filtered into the newspaper offices of 
the country but where the slightest doubt existed as to the propriety of 
carrying these stories, they were referred to Washington for verification 
and release. If a release was refused on a given story, it was killed, not¬ 
withstanding the fact that no legal obligation rested upon the editor either 
to submit his story to the government or to hold it out of the paper. 

There is a wide difference, however, between wartime and,peace-time 
practice. Although Washington correspondents in a large sense enjoy 
the hospitality of Congress, that body exercises no control over what may 
be written about it or any of its members. In a general way the gallery 
rules prohibit a correspondent from lobbying in behalf of pending legis¬ 
lation, or from having any direct connection in such legislation. He must 
not represent any business interest. And if he is engaged in press-agenting 
of any character he is required to post the fact in the two galleries and 
to identify his client. Beyond these simple limitations, there is no re¬ 
straint upon reporters of congressional proceedings. 

Once in a while some irate member of the House or Senate, resenting 
something that may have been written about him, clamors loudly for dis¬ 
cipline of the writer. This generally takes the form of a demand that 
the correspondent be expelled from the gallery. Such expulsion, however, 
rarely takes place. 

Recently Senator Heflin of Alabama, smarting under criticisms leveled 
at him by a number of the correspondents, announced that he would have 
the men in question “thrown out of the gallery”. Just what his particular 
grievance was, I do not now recall, but apparently it was too trivial for 
the Senate to bother about. The Senate correspondents as a body spared 
him, however, the trouble of exiling the men who had offended him. By 
agreement every man of them would quietly retire from the gallery when 
the senator arose to speak, leaving him to thunder at long rows of empty 
seats and to fret over the columns of the papers the next day in which 
there was no mention of him or his fulminations. 

There is a curious Senate tradition that the executive sessions of that 
body are sacred and that nothing which takes place behind the closed 
doors must be reported. Although senators sitting in secret session are 
honor bound not to reveal anything that is said in executive debates, the 
proceedings of such sessions are almost invariably accurately reported in 
the newspapers. These leaks have resulted in many indignation meetings 
and many futile investigations. 

A decade or so ago there came to town George G. Hill, a new mem¬ 
ber of the New York Tribune staff. Not knowing the rule regarding the 
supposed inviolability of executive sessions, Hill approached the late Sena- 


56 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


tor Hoar of Massachusetts, one of the most austere of men, and politely- 
asked the Senate leader what had taken place at an executive session. At 
first Hoar merely glared furiously at the correspondent, then, suddenly 
relenting, asked if Hill were not a new arrival. Finding that Hill was a 
newcomer, the senator led the young man to a dark corner and gave him 
full and complete account of all that had happened. 

The next day Senator Hoar arose in the Senate and in a voice that 
quivered with simulated wrath, he read aloud Hill’s report of the exec¬ 
utive session, reminding the Senate that it was accurate in every detail. 
Then turning upon his colleagues he declared with mock solemnity that 
such a report could only have come from some senator, some man who 
had so far forgotten his duty to his country, the sacredness of his oath 
and his own sense of personal honor as to reveal the secret proceedings of 
the Senate. Mr. Hoar then added that if the senator responsible for that 
outrageous and disgraceful breach of faith were present, it was fervently 
hoped that he would take to heart the lecture then being delivered. 

This was the same George Hill, I might say, parenthetically, who 
afterward became chief of the Tribune Bureau in Washington, and who 
administered a rebuke to one of his new men some years ago, worthy 
of the best traditions of the corps of Washington correspondents. It 
was at the time of Jessie Wilson’s marriage at the White House to Mr. 
Sayre. Only representatives of the press associations were admitted to 
the East Room on that occasion. But a new man had come down to join 
the Tribune staff, a typical New Yorker, with all the cheap New York 
devices for getting news. He approached Hill on the night of the wedding 
with an air of triumph. He said he had sent his wife to bribe a White 
House cook to allow her inside as a helper; that she would witness the 
wedding in that fashion and would give the Tribune a big special story. 
Hill allowed his man to finish, then turned upon him savagely, saying: 

‘When you have been here a little longer you will learn that Wash¬ 
ington correspondents get their news from the front door, not the back 
door, of the White House.” 

I would not have you assume, however, that Washington correspond¬ 
ents do not treasure a scoop. One of the historic scoops which is still 
talked about in Washington was executed back in 1898, by Matthew Tighe 
of the Hearst newspapers and illustrates the fact that most beats are 
not matters of careful planning, but are the result of eternal vigilance. 

The war with Spain was being fought. Cervera’s fleet had been bot¬ 
tled up in the harbor of Santiago. The thrilling voyage of the old Oregon 
around the Horn had just been accomplished. Hobson had made himself 
a hero by daringly sinking a collier in the harbor’s mouth. It was deemed 
probable that the Spanish men-of-war would not venture forth and give 
battle, but would remain blockaded during an indefinite siege. 

On Saturday, the third of July, however, the Spanish admiral, leading 


News and the Newspaper 


57 


his column, made a mad dash for the open sea and, as you know, his 
fleet was destroyed in the most thrilling naval engagement which had ever 
taken place in the Western Hemisphere. There was no wireless in those 
days. Even cable communication was slow and difficult. Dispatch boats 
were used both by the aavv and by the newspapers in making their reports 
and these were often delayed. 

About noon on Sunday following the battle, the country still un¬ 
conscious of what had taken place off Santiago, Tighe was at his post at 
the White House, and alone. The Secretary of the Navy, John D. Long, 
unexpectedly emerged from the Executive Mansion, and as he walked 
away, Tighe approached him and inquired casually if there were any 
news. 

The secretary believed not, but as he proceeded down the driveway, 
Tighe still accompanying him, he drew from his pocket a cablegram, say¬ 
ing: 

“By the way,. I have just received this message from Admiral Samp¬ 
son, saying that the fleet under his command had engaged and destroyed 
the Spanish squadron. I have just shown it to the President. Perhaps 
it may be of some interest.” 

Of some interest! Tighe, scarcely able to control himself as he made 
a copy of it, opined mildly that it might interest a few people. At the 
gate he said goodby to the secretary, after learning that Mr. Long was on 
his way to the home of a friend for luncheon and would therefore scarcely 
be accessible to other newspaper men for several hours. 

Tighe ran like mad for the Hearst bureau and, arousing a sleepy 
telegraph operator, flashed his great story. The Hearst newspapers were 
abroad with extras in half an hour and not until these papers appeared 
were their rivals aware of what had happened. And it was more than 
two hours later before Mr. Long was found and official confirmation of 
the Tighe story was obtained. 

There is a story in Washington that Tighe’s great scoop so com¬ 
mended him to Mr. Hearst that that great publisher issued an order that 
come what may, no man but himself should ever discharge Tighe from the 
Hearst service. Whether that is true or not, Matthew Tighe has remained 
on the Hearst Bureau all these years and is still there, although scores 
of men have come and gone meanwhile. 

But appreciation of this sort is not always the reward of the re¬ 
porter. Perhaps the story of another and a more recent beat, emphasizing 
what I mean, would interest you. During the course of the Disarmament 
Conference in Washington, the Four-Power Pacific Treaty was secretly 
negotiated. Many of us who were covering the conference had received 
faint intimations of what was going on, but it remained for A. Maurice 
Low, Washington correspondent of the London Morning Post, to spring 


58 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


the real story, including the fact of the treaty itself and all essential de¬ 
tails of its terms. 

If this story had been printed only in London those of us who had 
been trimmed, so to speak, would not have felt particularly mortified 
about it, but the New York Herald had an arrangement to reprint all of 
Low’s dispatches and carried the story in full. 

Almost as soon as the Herald reached Washington an avalanche of 
denials from official quarters seemed to bury it as well as to discredit 
it. For reasons satisfactory to themselves, those who participated in the 
negotiations repudiated the story. The Herald, instead of standing loy¬ 
ally by its reporter until the facts were known, accepted the denials at 
face value and, apologizing for the alleged “fake”, fired Low out of its 
columns. 

In less than a week however, the conference formally announced the 
conclusion of the treaty along the exact lines laid down in Low’s exclusive 
article. 

May I tell you another story involving Maurice Low and illustrating 
the feuds that sometimes endure between Washington correspondents and 
the public men with whom they have news relations. Low is an English¬ 
man, but for many years he was the Washington correspondent of the 
Boston Globe. During that period of service he became involved in a 
bitter dispute with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, resulting in deep-seated 
enmity on both sides. 

Three times during the period of this feud, Low was recommended by 
British ambassadors in Washington to their sovereign for knighthood. 
And three times Senator Lodge, becoming aware of such recommenda¬ 
tions, intervened, using his great influence as a senator and a powerful 
member of the foreign relations committee, and defeated Low’s ambi¬ 
tion. I would hesitate to believe this story or to impute such smallness to 
a man of Mr. Lodge’s position in public life, if the senator himself had 
not related it in my presence and with manifest pride in his achievement. 

I might add that a fourth recommendation to the Crown went for¬ 
ward a few months ago from Ambassador Geddes, and Senator Lodge 
standing aside, the newspaper man became Sir Maurice Low. 

The White House is the most productive news source in Washington, 
first because the presidency in recent years has become more and more 
powerful and more and more the fountainhead of governmental policies; 
next, because Presidents since the days of McKinley have realized the 
high value of inspired publicity; and finally, because the public is pro¬ 
foundly interested in the intimate views, the patronage and even the fam¬ 
ily activities of the Chief Executive. 

It remained for President Roosevelt to inaugurate a new relationship 
between the presidency and the press. He learned early in his executive 
career what an ally a newspaper might be on occasion and he took full 


News and the Newspaper 


59 


advantage of the opportunity his office gave him to propagandize the 
country in behalf of his policies. Even so, Colonel Roosevelt seldom saw 
the Washington correspondents in a body. There was always a small 
group of news writers whom we called the “fair-haired” who had his con¬ 
fidence and, profiting by that confidence, were ready to lend themselves 
in a large sense to any cause which he might champion. Upon occasion 
he would summon forty or fifty correspondents at a time, as he did when 
he launched his first conservation congress, but usually he sent for only 
a half-dozen of his special friends with the result that there were many 
more scoops of White House origin during the Roosevelt period than 
since. 

There is one Roosevelt story which might interest you. He was an 
ardent ornithologist and spent much time talking birds to his friends. He 
once put in a hurry call for Edward E. Clark, then Washington corre¬ 
spondent of the Chicago Evening Post, who also had the bird hobby. 
Clark imagined that he had a big story coming and flashed his paper a 
bulletin to hold space for an important White House announcement. When 
he arrived, the President dismissed all other business, took Clark by the 
arm and, leading him mysteriously out on the lawn, pointed with great en¬ 
thusiasm to a nest of young owls that had just been discovered. 

President Taft, as you may recall, was an incorrigible traveler. He 
could not endure Washington life for more than two or three weeks at 
a stretch and when he would become bored by routine, patronage grabbers 
and legislative wrangling, he would accept a series of invitations, order 
his private car and take to the road. I was stationed at the White House 
during the greater part of the Taft regime, representing the Munsey news¬ 
papers and the International News Service. It fell to my lot to travel with 
Mr. Taft more than 300,000 miles. 


60 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


The Making of the Cartoon 

By D. R. Fitzpatrick 
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch 

In making this address, Mr. Fitzpatrick showed and discussed a large number 
of his cartoons that had been published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Only a few 
can be reproduced here, and the comments on the others are necessarily eliminated. 

The thing I try to do in cartoons is to make them as simple as possible. 
I try to keep the drawing as free from details as possible. 

The advantage I find in crayon as a medium is that it lends itself to 
simple handling. The crayon is large, and I am not so apt to be 



Spring in Forest Park. 




News and the Newspaper 


61 


led into details with it, as is the tendency with a small instrument like a 
pen. 

The cartoon, “Spring In Forest Park”, is a local slant on the national 
mania for regulating other people’s affairs. 

“Held For Ransom.” The capture of Americans by Chinese bandits 
suggested this idea. The American tariff bandit is holding the consumer 
for ransom. 



Held for Ransom. 

Sometimes you can take a combination of situations that come up. 
For instance, in this case, the tariff was a standing issue that we were 
attacking and the Chinese bandit situation came up on the front pages of 
the newspapers; so I made a combination of the two. 

The thing I hope to do in coming here and showing you these draw¬ 
ings is to try and arouse your interest in art. You ought to have some 
basic idea of art as a part of your journalistic equipment because many 
of you will some day have to pass judgment on pictures for publication. 


62 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


The very fact that you are here is a confession that you do not feel ca¬ 
pable of editing written matter without special preparation, but I have 
met few people who did not feel their native taste and judgment equal 
to the task of judging pictures. They know what they like but they can’t 
say why they like it. I can’t outline an art course but I’d suggest you 
at least look at all the good work you can get hold of. Among the Euro¬ 
peans I’d suggest Forain and Steinlen of France for special study. 



The Pursuit of Happiness. 


DISCUSSION 

Question: What is the relation between the cartoonist, the editor 
and the policy of the paper? 

Answer: That depends on the publication. Of course, cartoons would 


News and the Newspaper 


63 


be subject to the editorial policy of the paper. In my case, I am in 
sympathy with the editorial policy. 

Question: Why is the “constructive cartoon” harder than what might 
be termed the “destructive cartoon”? 



The Watch on the Rhine. 


Answer: I don’t know exactly why that is—unless it is something on 
the same principle as war—the man who is on the defensive is always 
in a weaker position. 

Cartooning is essentially caricature and caricature in itself is satire. 
Satire by its very nature is critical, and therefore, it can only be con¬ 
structive by exposing sham. 



64 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


The Newspaper in the Small City 

The Editorial Content 

By Edward Fexgate 
Editor, the Higginsville Jeffersonian 

I will speak from the standpoint of the small-town newspaper; the 
big city newspaper men who are here at Journalism Week can speak for 
themselves. 

The editorial content, I take it, is the content of the people’s minds. 
If I could examine the three thousand brains of the people of Higginsville 
I’d have a pretty good idea of what my editorials were to be. According 
to some of the newspapers of the county—judging from their editorial con¬ 
tent—there is nothing in the people’s minds. There are no editorials in 
some of the papers; even the old “Jeff” falls down at times. The reason 
for no editorials is in the editor. 

There is plenty going on. As I have turned the matter over in my 
mind it seems to me that the editorial is the result of a keen eye that is 
able to translate things into type. I could send two men up the street. 
One would come back with three pages of copy; the other would see 
and write nothing. The former is the man to find an editorial topic. 

Editorials do not take much time to write, I write mine at any time, 
keeping a little book in which I jot down the thoughts that come to me. 
Half my editorials come to me when I am sitting at the table with the 
wife and children or hoeing the garden. One word or a sentence is enough 
to fix the idea; the rest comes easy. Not to capture the idea is to come 
to the typewriter empty-handed. Three or four words will grow to 
a quarter of a column. 

There is no limit to the editorial content. One can write about King- 
Tut three thousand years ago or the airplane jitney service in years to come. 
If the editor cannot see anything of local importance he can go far off. 

The small-town editorial should be about the things that interest the 
people of that town. The thesis of an Harvard Master of Arts would 
fall flat as an editorial in my paper, but I can get the warm support of 
many of my readers by editorials on our shoe factory which is being 

built, the location of the hard-surfaced roads in the county, or the com¬ 

ing election. 

I used to think all editorials were unread, that writing them was 

brain gymnastics for the editor. That’s wrong. I’ve had people clip arti¬ 

cles I have written and come back with a reply. I have a regular editorial 
column, right under the masthead on page two and whether there are few 
or many they are always there. 

I am strong for the short editorials. I have been running the same 


News and the Newspaper 


65 


editorial squib for a year and expect to run it for about seven years more, 
“Let’s get water from the river”. Higginsville is only ten miles from the 
Missouri and this ought to be our water supply. People are talking about 
a bond issue for this project. 

Another local prospect—the white way—was started, then dropped. 
For a year Jeffersonian readers saw “Let’s finish the white way”. It’s 
done now. 

But I don’t always write about mudholes, white ways and water 
mains. I get quite a little satisfaction in picking up philosophical squibs 
on life. Life after all, is the most interesting thing in the world. Keep 
your eyes open and you will see events that are really life, which when 
put in your paper will make people say, “Now, isn’t that the truth.” 

Here’s one that came to me: “Don’t put things off; put them over”. 
I wrote this in a second or two, published it in the Jeffersonian and let 
it go. Months afterward I got a letter from a Florida banker saying he 
had seen this squib in a New York paper, credited to the Jeffersonian (one 
honest man in New York; I’d like to meet him). It had impressed the 
banker, he had some motto cards printed and was helped by the daily re¬ 
minder. The whole day was brightened to think I had done some good 
and I swelled with importance to think of the great places to which my 
little paper went. 

Another one: “Business is looking up to see if taxes are coming down”. 
The Literary Digest took it to help make their readers smile. 

I got a circular from a paper house stressing their brand of paper and 
giving the origin of the word. “This is too good to miss,” thought I; 
so stole their thunder and made this: “By neglecting the brand we often 
get burned”. Do I hear any “amens”? 

Here are some of the same: 

“A man is paid for what he knows and has to pay for what he does 
not.” 

“Persons who are not up on a thing are usually down on it.” 

“Transportation is high. It is sometimes expensive to express your 
thoughts.” 

“Ed Howe says that every time you look at a 12-year-old boy he needs 
a pair of shoes. Ed Felgate says every time you look at a grade-school 
kid he needs a new tablet and pencil.” 

“Rain in Missouri .changes it from the lure to the leer of the road.” 

“Some of the tourists that pass our house must have forgotten their 
piano and bathtub.” 

And so it goes. Not heavy editorial topics to be sure, but like a 
choice piece of country ham nestling between the upper and lower layers 
of the heavy stuff. 


66 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


The Make-Up of a Newspaper 

By Edgar C. Nelson 
Publisher, Boonville Advertiser 

When my paper goes into the mail it at once becomes my spokesman 
and my representative. What conceptions my readers get of me as an 
editor and a publisher, of my ability, my ideas and my ideals, come from 
the impression the child of my desk and my workshop makes upon them. 

If my paper presents a pleasing appearance I have gone a long way 
toward “selling” my reader, even though he has not gotten beyond the 
front page and does not know the contents of a single column. If the 
paper is inviting he is ready to read it. 

Good news deserves good headlines. The value of the story should 
dictate the size of the headline. Readers do not relish being misled. If 
the reader finds beneath a big headline a paragraph or two of practically 
no news value he unconsciously resents it and feels that he has been tricked. 

Particular attention should be given to the make-up of the front page. 
Here’s the editor’s show window for his best news. It is always easy to 
have a nicely balanced front page provided it is planned before press day. 
Waiting until the make-up hour is dangerous to its appearance and trying 
on the make-up man’s religion. 

Then come the inside pages. Ours is a 12-page paper and we en¬ 
deavor to make each page excel the others. Good stories headed up well 
and placed on the inside pages make pleasant surprises for your reader. 

It’s difficult for a tailor to produce a good-looking suit from shoddy 
cloth; likewise it’s hard for a good-looking newspaper to be printed on 
poor stock. Look well to your news print. Often we have found it a 
good investment to add a half-cent or even a cent per pound to the price 
of out print paper in order to get'a better grade. Rags may have been 
all right for Cinderella but it was the glass slipper that made a hit with 
the prince. 

Good paper calls for good ink. For years we have bought nothing 
but extra quality news ink and, used sparingly, it has always paid in re¬ 
sults obtained. 

Your cylinder press must be capable of doing good work, else your 
printer’s efforts along typographical lines count for little. Many a drum 
cylinder press has been made to print like new by careful attention to the 
tympan. Close to our press is a roll of heavy oiled tympan paper and a 
new tympan is put on the press every week. This, with good rollers, 
should insure a good clear print. 

Many an issue of a well-printed paper is spoiled in appearance by a 
poorly adjusted folder. If I fail to pass the pearly gates it will be be¬ 
cause I know little about printing machinery but persist in attempting 


News and the Newspaper 


67 


to help adjust my folder occasionally. However I have found through 
long and ofttimes bitter experience that tight tapes plus the careful use 
of an ordinary carpenter’s square do much toward making a nicely folded 
paper possible. 

Just a word about our single wrappers. Often one is tempted to use 
paper that has been printed on one side, or even copy paper that has 
been scribbled on. This is a mistake. Thus garbed, your weekly message 
does not stand much show to make a hit with the reader. Appearances 
are against it. We try to send out all single papers in printed wrappers. 
The cost is small and is more than paid for in the advertising value of 
the wrapper. 

Now a word as to the advertisements in your paper. Few advertisers 
know anything about type but practically everyone recognizes a good set¬ 
up. Regardless of your advertising rate, when you accept a customer’s 
ad copy you assume the obligation of giving him the best set-up your 
printer and your type equipment is capable of producing. Wellbalanced 
ads not only please the man who pays for them and have a greater sell¬ 
ing value, but they also add to the good looks of your paper. Never for¬ 
get that ads have a news value to the reader as well as a cash value to 
you. While the reader demands a liberal portion of pure reading matter, 
he would be disappointed in a paper that carried no ads at all. 

For the modern small-town weekly or daily a good advertising cut 
or mat service, including a good casting box, is necessary. Advertising 
is a commodity that newspapers have for sale, and we have found that 
in the sale of it there is nothing that will prove a greater aid than a good 
service. A nicely outlined ad carrying one or two illustrations, placed 
before the average business man’s eye, nine times out of ten as good 
as sold. 

Today in Missouri there are thousands of potential advertisers who 
are not advertising because they feel they cannot write their own ads. 
The newspaper man who is alert enough to see that they are supplied with 
attractive and suggestive ad copy will be well repaid for his efforts. As 
an illustration, we recently outlined a “builders” page ad. We selected a 
list of non-advertisers among our builders and contractors and sent our 
17 -year-old stenographer out to interview them. She sold the entire 
page in three hours. 

Now for a moment, let us turn from the mechanical and advertising 
members of our trinity to the third—the contents of the paper. We 
feature the Boonville Advertiser as “a home paper for home people” and 
strive to live up to the slogan. The home field carefully cultivated will 
yield a bountiful harvest for the man with faith enough to sow, energy 
enough to plow and patience enough to wait. 

The average reader takes your paper for the home news. If he finds 


68 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


it therein correctly and concisely told he will swear by the paper; other¬ 
wise he may be tempted to swear at it. 

Get the news of your county week in and week out and you need 
not worry about your circulation. Departmentalized news is always good. 
As an editor in a great agricultural and livestock county I have always 
featured a farm department, and as the former owner and editor of a 
weekly newspaper published in a small town I was able to build a big circu¬ 
lation largely on that feature. Since acquiring the Boonville Advertiser, 
although in a much larger town, I find the same department a valuable 
one. 

Don’t overlook the feature story. It’s a winner for the country 
weekly just as it is for the big daily. Your reader will treasure the feature 
stories long after he has forgotten the best news story you ever printed. 
The advertiser never goes to press without at least one feature story. 
About what? you ask. They are on every hand waiting to be put into 
type. The writing of one will suggest others. Study the magazines and 
big dailies for your style, if need be, but search your own field for sub¬ 
jects. 

For instance: Telling our readers that Sombart’s dairy on the out¬ 
skirts of Boonville was milking twenty cows did not create much interest, 
but a feature story of Fred Sombart, Boonville capitalist, with an ambi¬ 
tion to build a great herd of register-of-merit Jerseys made many of our 
readers appreciate the adaptability of our rich river hills to the dairy in¬ 
dustry—and incidentally resulted in $50 worth of advertising from Mr. 
Sombart. A story of Samuel Cole, who as a boy lived in the old fort 
at Boonville and hunted deer with Indians, pleased every descendant of 
the seventeen children of whom he was the noble sire and brought us 
some new subscribers. 

And lastly, as the preacher says, forget not that ours is a noble calling. 
Above and beyond the mere fact that it can be made to pay handsome 
dividends in cash is the greater reward of the knowledge that one thus 
engaged can do his part in making his own town and community a better 
place in which to live, to love and to work. 

Greater reward hath no man. 


Shall the Newspaper Do Commercial Printing? 

By Wieeiam Southern, Jr. 

Editor, Independence Examiner 

Several times at meetings of press associations I have suggested that 
even in small offices the businesses of publishing a newspaper and run¬ 
ning a printing office should be entirely separate. Immediately objections 
arose in which the positive statement was always made that in a small 


News and the Newspaper 


69 


town a newspaper could not exist without the job printing business in 
connection. 

There is only one excuse for the job printing office in connection with 
the newspaper office, and that is that some of the investment necessary for 
the publication of a newspaper may also be used for the commercial print¬ 
ing. The two businesses are not any more closely related than the hard¬ 
ware business and the dry-goods business, which may be housed in the 
same rooms and use the same cash register. 

Commercial printing is a business of itself, requiring a peculiar turn 
of business ability. The job printer spends 80 cents to produce an article 
which he sells for $1. 

The newspaper business is not of the same class. There is always a 
a certain fixed expense in the production of a newspaper which must 
be met whether that paper is doing a good business or not. In the ordinary 
country newspaper office this cost of production is practically the same 
each week regardless of the amount of business carried. That being the 
case, every additional advertisement produces revenue which goes on the 
profit side. 

Many country newspaper offices are obliged to run a job printing office 
in connection with the newspaper because the owners are job printers 
and not newspaper men. My observation is that a great many of the 
country newspapers are existing on the profits made by the job printing 
office. If this is the case the publisher should go into the job printing 
business exclusively and the newspaper man into the newspaper business 
exclusively. 

I have had men ask how it would be possible to run a newspaper in 
a town of a thousand people, or even twenty-five hundred people, without 
a job printing office in connection. I would answer this question by call¬ 
ing your attention to a few things which happen in almost every newspaper 
office, and which make the country newspaper field very fruitful for men 
who come through the country making their living off of the country 
newspaper without having any investment in the business. 

All of you have had some experience with the man who comes in 
and offers to put on a subscription campaign. He knows his business and 
is a good solicitor, and the ordinary plan is that you pay one-half of the 
amount of money he brings in by his campaign and secure the additional 
number of subscribers which he puts on your list, hoping that at least 
50 per cent of them will remain as permanent subscribers. Any man 
present, or woman either, who is publishing a weekly newspaper can go 
into his or her own territory, say for two or three days each week, and 
canvass very possible prospect on every rural route, doing the work system¬ 
atically, and make more money for those two or three days than by 
staying in the office and running the job end of it. Not only can you 
by this method make the actual cash, but you add to the value of your 


70 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


newspaper property at least $500 for every one hundred new subscribers 
you get and hold. Any one of you could devote at least this much time 
to this work if you had no job printing office to bother with. This one 
item alone would justify the stopping of the job printing business. 

But this is by no means all. A few weeks ago in my town a traveling 
salesman spent two days—and I want to say to you that my town is 
solicited closely, systematically and carefully every week, This man took 
a piece of cardboard 8 by 10 inches and pasted down the center a piece 
of sandpaper, adding the words, “for convenience hang me between the 
telephone and the match-box”. Across the top he printed, “Community 
Directory”. He marked the balance of the card out into spaces about two 
inches wide by one inch deep. He solicited advertisements for that card 
only among a little group of stores in one part of town, stores which are 
not usually liberal newspaper advertisers. He sold nineteen of these spaces 
for $2 each. Probably one hundred of those cards were printed and de¬ 
livered, possibly one hundred to those who had taken advertisements. His 
day’s work netted him about $12 and the advertisement wasn’t worth a 
thin dime to anyone. 

I am using this actual illustration, which is only one of the many 
schemes being pulled off in your town at different times. Any of you by 
putting in the necessary preparation of dummy pages, quarter pages or 
half pages can go out and in half a day sell a group of advertisements for 
your paper. 

The trouble is that you are not willing to do the work. When some 
man comes into town and offers to put on a special edition you agree to 
pay him 50 per cent of all he puts into that special page. After you de¬ 
duct the cost of printing you are giving away legitimate profit on your 
own business. 

You can at any time put on a special edition yourself. The reason 
that you don’t do it is because you are too busy trying to get a piece of 
job work which you will sell for $4.50, on which your net profit ought 
to be $1.50 and probably is about 30 cents. 

As long as you are hung up doing job work in your office you can 
never canvass the rural routes which your paper should cover, nor can 
you go out arid sell an extra page every week or get up a special edition 
of your own paper. If your paper is paying expenses and a small profit 
with the work you are giving it now and you can go out each week and 
sell an additional page for 25 cents an inch, which is $5 a column, $30 a 
page for a six-column paper and $35 for a seven-column paper, you are 
making more money than your office would otherwise make on $150 worth 
of job work. 

I have no doubt that most of you have at least one extra man in 
your office who would not be necessary if you did no job printing. That 
man costs you anywhere from $20 to $40 a week. If you are paying this 


News and the Newspaper 


71 


man $30 a week you will have to do at current prices $100 worth of job 
work each week to pay his salary, without leaving yourself any profit on his 
work. If instead you used this extra man to set up extra advertising for 
your paper to the amount of $100 you would have practically a net profit 
of $70 on his work. In most cases you would be able to do away with 
this man’s expense until your business increased to such an extent that 
.another printer would be necessary to get out the paper. 

Not long ago a Missouri newspaper man sold his office and quit. He 
said that for a year in order to cut expenses he had been working in the 
back room setting type and doing job work, and even then he could 
not make it pay. That explained the reason for his failure. The man who 
cannot make more money on the street than by working as a printer in 
the back room ought to quit and get a j ob at the case. I do not care how 
small a newspaper is, the executive should never set a stick of type, fool 
with a linotype or a press. Personally, I think a man or woman better 
equipped to run a paper successfully without any knowledge of the me¬ 
chanical part of production. 

The number of subscribers which may be had for a real country weekly 
by close application and intelligent work is limited only by the number 
of families in your territory. 

The amount of advertising that you can carry in your weekly paper 
is limited entirely by the amount of hard work and intelligent applica¬ 
tion which you put upon the sales department of your paper. 


72 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


Advertising in the Small City 

The Personal Touch in Advertising 

By R. E. Shannon 

Business Manager, the Evening Journal, Washington, la. 

Most of the advertising in a town such as ours is done spasmodically. 
The solicitor starts out at 9 o’clock in the morning. He finds the mer¬ 
chant reading his mail or sweeping out, and invariably he looks startled 
at your appearance. He has that startled look down to perfection. You 
watch him then, while he rushes to the counter, tears off a piece of wrap¬ 
ping paper and begins preparing his advertising copy for the day. If you 
could analyze his mind during that process you would find about three 
ideas that are uppermost: 

1. He wants to get the blamed thing off his hands. 

2. He wants to show his competitor across the street that he can 
sell merchandise just as cheaply as anybody else. 

3. He wants to show the public that he can write some real stuff, 
that he is something of a literary genius. 

Why in the world is it that the average small-town merchant, when 
he sits down to write his advertising, instead of using plain common-sense 
talk such as he uses across the counter every day, immediately tries to 
think of something pretty to write, some handsome phraseology? He 
thereby defeats the purpose of his advertising. 

About three years ago we made a trade survey to discover what the 
people thought of our paper and our merchants. I think the most inter¬ 
esting thing we learned was that the people of our community were show¬ 
ing a distinct preference for advertising that had news value—advertising 
with the personal touch. 

Some years ago I attended a convention of the American Newspaper 
Publishers’ Association in New York City. I sat back in the corner and 
listened to Jason Rogers tell us how he created his paper, the New York 
Globe. I noticed he was using methods we were not using; but that 
was his fault, not ours. Among other things, he said that the New York 
Globe was compelled to turn down advertising every day for lack of 
space. That was the chief difference, I think, between the New York 
Globe and the Washington Journal. He said they always gave preference 
to advertising with news value. 

Now I am going to be personal—I’m going to name names and quote 
figures. 

We had a furniture dealer at that time in Washington, named Mc- 
Elhinney. He wanted some kind of advertising, but wasn’t sure what 
kind. I told him about advertising with news value, and he liked the 


News and the Newspaper 


73 


idea. We sat down one evening and prepared six advertisements. That 
was six years ago—and Joe McElhinney has not missed a single issue of 
the Journal since then. In the six years he has trebled his business, and 
he attributes a large amount of his success to the advertisements. He 
comes down to the Journal office every day and prepares his copy. (See 
page 74 for example.) 

Joe has a half-interest in a drug store. His partner is George Mc¬ 
Daniels. George runs a daily under the caption ‘TO Years Ago Today”, 
and he gets splendid results. (See example, page 74.) 

We also have a bank that has gotten away from the old capital-stock- 
and-surplus way of advertising. It tells stories of depositors, thrift, etc. 
(See advertisement on page 74.) 

Rothschild, Ready-to-wear store, incorporates in his advertising a 
column he calls “Aditorials”—little paragraphs, purely personal. He says 
he gets more results from that line of “aditorials” than from the balance 
of his advertising. (See page 75.) 

A produce man runs a piece of “poetry” every day—and more people 
read this “poetry” than the works of more well-known poets. (See ex¬ 
ample on page 75.) 

A year ago two young men came to Washington and established 
themselves in the oil business—service stations. They went into a business 
that was completely covered in our town. I wondered why they selected 
Washington. But they laid out an advertising campaign to run three 
times a week. And today they are considered the biggest dealers in the 
city. They localized their advertising. And they have just opened a new 
filling station. (See page 76.) 

Gust Bramer, the tailor, makes every ad sound like Gust. He be¬ 
gan his advertising last September and in the last four months of 1922 he 
sc4d more suits than in the eight months preceding. He has now moved 
to larger quarters on the main street. (See page 78.) 

Barclay, the grocer, gets away from the old shop quotations. He 
tells stories and gives us something to think about. Of course, he carries 
the usual quotations alongside, but it is the stories and paragraphs that 
secure most attention and sell his goods. (See page 77.) 

Frank L. Wilson & Co., shoe store, since the spring of 1922 have been 
concentrating their advertising efforts almost exclusively on Arch Rest 
shoes. Previously they had scattered their fire. They were advertising 
all kinds of shoes at all kinds of prices. They changed their policy 
abruptly, began telling the public in a purely personal way about how 
Arch Rest shoes were pleasing their patrons, and in one year they have be¬ 
come the largest buyers of Arch Rest shoes in any town the size of Wash¬ 
ington. In their ads they embody such stories as the following example. 
(See page 77.) 


74 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


We overheard Lauder Ken- 
m nedy say yesterday, “We’ll get 
E9 rain; we always have.” 
g We’re convinced today that 
he knew what he was talking 
H about. 

g We received a nice shipment 
of beds this morning. They are 
® all metal beds, finished in wal- 
m nut and oak and Vernis Mar- 
tin. 

™ Wouldn’t you like to own a 
U bed spring that is guaranteed to 
g be satisfactory for a life time? 

J McElhinney’s 

® $7.95 top price on hogs. 

@ Rain tonight. Fair tomorrow. 


10 Years 
Ago Today— 

“Tink” Shenefelt sold his 
restaurant on the East Side 
to “Bill” Cox. 


First Sarg. Eldridge tells us 
PARKO is great to use as a 
shaving cream. He says it 
makes the skin the kind you 
love to touch. 

McElhinney Drug Co. 

PHONE 89 




E 




“I Have Found 

that I live better since I 
started to save 10 per 
cent of my money,” re¬ 
marked one of our pro¬ 
gressive young men. 

It was his experience 
that before he started to 
save it took all of his 
money to live. But he 
heard that people were 
successful at saving 10 per 
cent so he decided to try 
it. Now he thinks that he 
lives even better than be¬ 
fore because he has his 
bank account to fall back 
on. 

Are you spending every¬ 
thing or are you saving 
ipart of your income so 
that you will be able to 
live better. If you will 
just try saving 10 per cent 
of your money you will 
find that it will not be a 
burden and the results 
will be very pleasing to 
you. 

Open your account to¬ 
day at the 

Washington 

National 

Bank 


The Only National Bank 
in Washington County 




30 


A 




































News and the Newspaper 


75 


ADITO RIALS 

It May Interest You to Know 
THAT 

Mrs. Rothschild was in Chicago 
last week and as usual bought 
some good looking silk dresses 
and we have marked them as 
cheap as $13.89 up to $19.89. 

THAT 

if you see some spooky lights 
floating around in your yard 
after dark do not be alarmed, it 
is only someone hunting fish 
worms with a spot light. We 
used to dig them. 

THAT 

you do not need a spot light to 
find the fine Linen, Voile, Rat¬ 
ine and Eponge dresses we have 
just received. $8.89 to $15.00. 

THAT 

I am going to visit my daughter 
and her hubby next week. May 
try the fishing there. Hope you 
keep the girls at the store busy 
while I am gone. 

THAT 

these cool days may not be just 
right for corn and oats but it 
reminds women they need a new 
Spring coat, or suit. Prices 
greatly reduced. 

THAT 

IT PAYS TO SHOP AT 

ROTHSCHILD’S 


R 

E 

I 

S 

T 

E 

R 

S 

« 


Yesterday was a wonderful day, 
The services were all very fine, 
The parade was sure pretty, 

With all of those children in line. 

Talk about something pretty, 

The color of the richest gold, 

Is our brand Washington butter, 

As good as the best that is sold. 


W. S. REISTER & SONS 
Cash Buyers of 

CREAM, EGGS and POULTRY 
Mfgs. of Washington Butter 


Read our market ad on page two for 
prices 


R 

E 

I 

S 

T 

E 

R 

S 





























76 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


More Acres to the Gallon 


One of our farmer customers asked us this: 
“Why is it that your Climax Kerosene will plow 
more acres per gallonf” He had tried Climax 
and another brand in his tractor. We simply 
told him that Climax was GOOD kerosene. 

This same man told us his tractor seemed to 
work better with Climax. And he also said that his 
wife tried the two grades in the lamps and that Cli¬ 
max burned much brighter and didn’t smoke. He 
ordered another barrel of Climax. 


Washington Oil Co. 

Opposite Graham Theater 
Free Crank Case Service 


My message to you is this: Make your advertising interesting—as 
interesting as the news. It is a part of the news of the newspaper. 

You can pick up any newspaper. You will find that few of the ad¬ 
vertisements appeal to you. Just start at one end of the paper and go 
right through and read every advertisement there—some of you will shy 
at the very thought of it. And yet that is exactly what we are asking 
the public to do. 

On the basis of the returns from our survey we give our advertisers 
the following advice: 

Write your copy to the readers—not to your competitor. 

Avoid generalities—tell them something definite about your store 
or your service. 

Keep away from the superlative—exaggerations are usually recognized. 

Be brief—it’s better to say too little than too much. 












News and the Newspaper 


77 



—‘m 


Even in the grocery business, 
there’s pleasure. Every once in 
a while—sometimes more often 
than that—a customer com¬ 
mends us. 

* * 

A little praising now and then 
is relished by the best of men. 

* * 

I heard today about a man in 
a restaurant who gargled his 
soup so loud that a deaf man 
out 'in front yelled, “Run for 
your lives, the dam has brok¬ 
en.” 

* * 

I like the new parking marks 
around the square. How do you 
like them?? 

* * 

“We roast our coffee—others 
praise it,” remarks a live-wire 
groceryman. Dinner Party Cof¬ 
fee is roasted only once. That’s 
just before it is sealed up in 
packages. What a wonderful 
coffee it is! 

* * 

If you are a stranger to this 
store, maybe you’re waiting for 
an invitation. All right—this is 
your invitation. Come in. 

* * 

I think you will like to trade 
here. Others do—at least they 
say they do. And they keep 
coming back. 


GLENN N. 

BARCLAY 



One Day Last 
Week 


a lady came into our store 
and said, “Mr. Wilson I 
want Mr. Corwin to fit my 
feet with a pair of Arch 
Rest Oxfords; he fitted 
me last year and it was 
the first time I was ever 
fitted.” 

We hear such statements 
every day, people who 
have worn these famous 
Arch Rest Oxfords are 
loud in their praise of 
them. They are so com¬ 
fortable, they are light in 
weight, they are good 
looking, hold their shape, 
wear well and are delight¬ 
ful to wear. 


We have never sold 
any kind of shoes that 
have pleased our patrons 
so universally as these 
Arch Rest Oxfords. 













78 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


liiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiimmiimmimmim^ 

| VESTS OFF!! 

E I bet all you men took off your vests today. 

E I did. Too hot weather now for vests, I think. 

E Two-piece summer suits is the thing. I got 

E some beautiful light summer cloths—make you 
E dandy suits—mohair, palm beach and tropical cloth. 

1 $23.50 to $28.50 

mtm 

E made to your measure 

E A perfect fit or no money 

| Gust Bramer 

1 THE TAILOR 

E East Side Square 


;mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmiimmmmmmmimmimmiimimm 


Systematize your advertising—appropriate a percentage of your gross 
volume of business for publicity; then spend it intelligently. 

And above all, be TRUTHFUL. If you want results from your 
ads the public must have confidence in your statements. 


Farmers’ Advertising 

By D. C. Simons 
Editor, the Tribune, Grant City 

The future of the country weekly lies in the development of three 
fields—farmers’ advertising, foreign advertising and local retail adver¬ 
tising. I place the development of farmers’ advertising first, because 
I believe it to be not only the easiest and least expensive field to develop, 


mimmimimmimmimMimmmmimumumiimiiimummmmnimji: 



News and the Newspaper 


79 


but also the most profitable. And that is true because the farmer reads 
and responds to advertising. 

The development will come more rapidly and with less expense to 
those local newspapers that are in sympathy with the farmer and his 
helpers, and are willing, in accord with newspaper tradition, to smile with 
him, fight with him and sympathize with him in times of stress. 

It seems to be an opinion held quite generally that we are a “sob sis¬ 
ter” to the farmer, but I say to you that the average farmer is made of 
different metal from that. In my county, where 70 per cent of our 7,646 
people live in the country, they are entirely within their rights when they 
ask for representation in my paper in proportion to their number. Their 
local comings and goings are just as much entitled to the columns of the 
country newspaper as the tea party of the banker’s wife or of the leading 
doctor, attorney or politician. 

Last year we carried approximately 7,000 inches of farm sale adver¬ 
tising, more than 1,000 inches of farmers’ want ads and around another 
1,000 inches of stock for sale, service, etc., or a total of about 9,000 
inches from farmers direct. Because we carried this 9,000 inches of 
farmers’ advertising we are permitted to carry 16,000 inches of local 
display—retail, professional, clearance sales and legals—and 6,000 inches 
of foreign. The farmers’ advertising came first and was the cause of 
the rest following to us, a total of 31,000 inches, 258 pages or almost 
exactly 50 per cent of the 532 pages printed in 1922. 

The basis on which this advertising was obtained, was the running of 
our newspaper for our subscribers entirely, and not for our advertisers. 
By that I mean the personal news of the various communities of the 
county. Nor is the paper opposed to the retail merchant or town interests, 
but the interests of 70 per cent of rural population come ahead of all else. 

Ten years ago the Tribune was started at Worth and eight years ago 
was moved to the county seat at Grant City where two papers already 
were published. The circulation at that time, 1914, was about 350 and 
the advertising rate 10 cents an inch, or $36 per page per thousand of circu¬ 
lation. The subscription price has been raised twice, first to $1.25 and then 
to $1.50, and the advertising rate to 15 cents and then to 20 cents. Because 
of the increase in circulation to an average of 1,762 for the six months 
ending December 31, 1922 (today it is 1,810, entirely paid in advance), 
the cost per page per thousand circulation has been reduced to $13.12. 

I’d like to add here that our farmers like their paper stopped at the 
expiration of the time paid for. Don’t worry, for if you are giving them 
the kind of paper a rural community deserves your experience will be like 
mine, that 50 per cent renew before it stops, 75 per cent before it has 
been stopped one month and between 90 and 95 per cent inside of three 


80 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


months. The balance—well, some die, some move in with the folks and 
some get mad at the paper and would not have it in the house. 

After you have the farmer on your subscription list your own adver¬ 
tising columns can win him through the same method we preach so regu¬ 
larly to others, but use so little ourselves. 

As a rule farm sales in Worth County use sixty inches of space. The 
farmer sells himself on this amount. For example, show him a paper with 
a bill printed full size therein. Ask him to start with page one and turn 
through, making note of those advertisements that he reads first, and he 
is sold. Naturally he or anyone else sees the large ones, and farm sales 
are advertised such a short time that large space is used to get instant 
attention, which it does. 

In 1910, as publisher of the Sheridan Advance, I believe I sold the 
first full page sale bill ad in northwest Missouri. The sale totaled at 
invoice $900 and the clerk’s list $1,125 so that farmer was well pleased 
with the $6 spent in advertising. 

The want ads are read first in the farm house because no one willingly 
overlooks a bargain. They run from one-half column to two columns a 
week, depending on the season. One farmer, at a cost of $2.25 for a five 
weeks’ want ad on seed potatoes, sold more than 100 bushels at $1.75, 
which was 85 cents more per bushel than the Farmers’ Exchange sold a 
carload for. A lady, at a cost of $2.40, sold more than 5,000 Rhode Island 
Red eggs at $3 and $5 per hundred. 

This advertising is placed almost exclusively in the Tribune because 
the farmers subscribe and pay for the Tribune, which reaches more than 
90 per cent of the homes of the county. Their advertising money goes 
where their subscription money goes—at least in this instance, and with¬ 
out solicitation. 

The Obligation of the Small-Town Publisher to His 

Advertisers 

By Alfonso Johnson 
Manager, the Columbia Missourian 

One Missouri editor, when asked what he owed his advertisers, said, 
“I don’t owe them anything. They pay me for white space and I give 
them what they pay for.” 

Another Missouri editor, in reply to the same question, said, “I owe 
them everything I can give them. I couldn’t run my paper without my 
advertisers.” 

Both of these editors are right if they had said what they meant, and 
both would have been wrong if they had meant what they said. 

The first editor sells more than white space; he charges for space plus 


News and the Newspaper 


81 


the cost of the service that makes the space valuable, and he does give full 
value for money received. He meant by his forceful statement that he 
did not give free publicity to advertisers and did not allow his news and 
editorial columns to be influenced by those who bought advertising space. 

The second editor did not mean that he allowed his advertisers to 
dictate his policies, neither did he mean that he carried out their ashes, 
built their fires, and waited on their customers. It has been proved that 
advertising in a successful newspaper is more valuable to the advertisers 
than the business of any advertiser is to the newspaper. 

A newspaper, if properly named, must give the news; it must inter¬ 
pret the news; it must entertain, in a degree; and must lead the commu¬ 
nity in the best things. Advertisers in local papers are also readers, and 
we owe our readers several things. What we owe advertisers in addition 
to what we owe other readers is in SERVICE for which we are paid, or 
for which we should be paid. 

What do we owe our readers? 

A real newspaper is a community institution for public service and 
its great duty is to print all the community news without distortion or 
color. The metropolitan papers may overshadow the news of their own 
city with national or international news but the paper of a small town 
must first of all be a local paper. We owe our readers a paper with news 
of all the home folks. 

We owe our readers the best newspaper that can be published in our 
community; best in news, best in editorials, best in advertising, best in 
typography. 

We must keep our news columns clean and we must keep our adver¬ 
tising columns clean. We must throw the unclean, unhealthy news story 
in the basket and must refuse objectionable and questionable advertising. 

No editor would invite a leading merchant and his wife to dine with 
him and then ask an unscrupulous get-rich-quick promoter to sit at the 
same table. No editor would invite the pastor of his church to take 
an auto ride and place beside him a foul-mouthed teller of vile stories. 

The story is told of a western editor who published a sensational 
paper filled with stories of crime and some very questionable advertising. 
After the regular edition was run off he “lifted” all objectionable matter 
both in news and advertising and filled in with human interest stories of 
kindness, extracts of sermons, advertisements of good books and made it 
all that a good newspaper should be. The second edition consisted of 
one copy and that copy went to the editor’s aged mother. 

The home paper goes into the home and someone’s mother sees every 
copy. 

The results of advertising depend greatly on the influence the news¬ 
paper has on its readers ; we must first pay our debt to those who sub¬ 
scribe for and read our paper. 


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Having produced the best possible newspaper from the reader stand¬ 
point, what do we still owe the advertiser? 

The city newspaper may say, “our rate is so much an agate line; 
bring in your copy and get it in early”; and slam the door. The small¬ 
town editor cannot and should not do that. W e sell more than agate lines; 
we sell inch space that is worthless until it is filled with advertising that: 

1. Will be seen. 

2. Will be read. 

3. Will be understood. 

4. Will be believed. 

5. Will bring the reader to the advertiser’s store. 

And generally it is up to the small-town editor to make the advertising 
copy do those things. 

It is up to us to see that the space paid for by local merchants brings 
result. We cannot afford to give the necessary service to our advertis¬ 
ers if we are charging for white space only. But which is cheaper to the 
merchant: white space at 20 cents an inch that brings no returns, or white 
space covered with an ad that brings results at 30 cents an inch? 

Merchants in small towns cannot afford to have advertising managers; 
in most cases they know but little about advertisement copy. When 
they sit down to write copy they become unnatural and stilted; pencil and 
paper give them stage fright. The average merchant could write won¬ 
derful copy if he could be natural on paper. It takes time to write adver¬ 
tisements if they are worth printing, and the small town merchant has so 
many duties he never thinks of his ad until the newspaper man comes in. 
Then he hurriedly scribbles something on a piece of wrapping paper or 
he says he has nothing. 

That is, he does if the newspaper man allows him to. I hope the day 
has gone when advertising men open the mechant’s door and shout 
“Nothing today?” 

The man who takes care of advertising on the small local paper must 
be advertising manager for every merchant in his town. He must know 
the merchandise and he must write ads that pull. Then he will carry 
carefully prepared copy for the merchant’s o k instead of trying to sell 
white space which makes the merchant nervous. It is much easier and 
more logical to sell copy than to sell white space to merchants in small 
towns. Copy is a service which the merchants recognize as an invest¬ 
ment; white space stares them in the face and looks like expense. 

Illustrations in advertising copy work wonders and attract attention. 
If the merchants do not have their own cut service, a newspaper can 
easily have a mat service and a small casting box and thus be able to illus¬ 
trate much of the copy. 

Service to our advertisers means more than preparation of good copy. 
It should help the merchants sell the goods after our papers have brought 


News and the Newspaper 


83 


customers to the store. The best ad in the world is useless if the retailer 
does not give service that satisfies. It is to our interest to urge our mer¬ 
chant-advertisers to give real service to their customers. 

A grocery store changed hands in Columbia. One of our ad solici¬ 
tors, a journalism student whose father runs a weekly paper in Missouri, 
had a big idea which he convinced the new grocer would bring business 
This solicitor suggested an open house, a sort of get-acquainted day, 
when every woman would be invited to the store, given some refreshments 
and incidentally be given a chance to see the stock and meet the new force. 
Together the solicitor and the grocer went to work; notice the “together.” 
They wrote letters to companies whose goods were on sale asking for 
samples and souvenirs. Two food demonstrators were obtained. A good 
advertising campaign was prepared inviting folks to the store. Half a 
dozen young ladies assisted the merchant in serving the visitors. The 
store was crowded all day. It was a grand success and the big idea was 
accomplished—the people came to the store and met the new proprietor. 

That opening day made a regular advertiser of that grocer. Sure, it 
took time, but it was worth it both for the grocer and for our paper. 

We owe something to national advertisers, too. Country publishers, 
as a rule, still pay too little attention to foreign advertising. Every news¬ 
paper should have its rate card in the hands of the most important agen¬ 
cies. If an agency asks for information about your paper, give it to him; 
if you don’t answer his inquiry you need not expect a contract. An agency 
man told me he was disgusted with weekly papers because they wouldn’t 
send in their rates or other information. Don’t make it hard for those 
who want to give you business. For most nationally-advertised goods 
the small town paper is the ideal medium. We have a quality circula¬ 
tion ; our paper goes into the homes, not into the street car aisles; and 
everyone in the home reads it. Nearly all the readers live in the trade 
territory of the town where our small paper is published. 

We do not owe our advertisers everything they ask for if they ask 
for more than service. Advertisers buy space in our advertising columns 
but they are not entitled, thereby, to space in our news columns. When 
we buy a loaf of bread at our grocers, does our merchant give us butter? 
Do we expect him to do so? 

Space in news columns should not be sold at any price, and news 
that goes into them should not be biased to suit advertisers or our banker. 
Nor should news be suppressed because it concerns an advertiser. One 
of our merchants had an automobile accident; unavoidably, as is generally 
the case. He told us to not say a word about it. We tried to explain that 
it was news and could not be suppressed. He wouldn’t listen. He said 
if we printed it, he would never advertise with us again. Have you ever 
heard that threat? We published the story and so far have had no adver- 


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tising. In the meantime his competitors continue to advertise and to get 
results. Space in our paper means more to his business than his business 
could possibly mean to us. Our advertising columns are worth more to 
all advertisers because we cannot be influenced by any one advertiser. 


News and the Newspaper 


85 


Women in Journalism 

Some Opportunities in Journalism for Women 

By Miss Beatrix Winn 

Secretary, Northwest Missouri Press Association, Maryville 

Since I have been editing the Northwest Missouri State Teachers’ 
College paper, the Northwest Missouri Press Association has adopted 
it and has given me an office in their organization. That is undoubtedly 
the reason I was placed on this program. Being only a college professor 
and not a real journalist, I went to four sources of information: Books, 
papers, schools of journalism, and graduates of these schools. 

After comparing these reports, I find it difficult to say anything that 
will be true of all newspaper women, as there seem to be as many kinds 
of newspaper women as there are kinds of women. What is true of the 
general reporter may not be true at all of the: 

Specialist who writes of her own field, as the fashion designer, the 
politician, the educator, etc. 

Society or club reporter. 

Dramatic, musical or art critic. 

Editor of women’s or children’s pages. 

Special writer or magazine writer. 

Women in publishing houses or in advertising. 

The correspondent. 

All, however, have in common the problem of how to get into the 
newspaper business, how to stay in, and how to keep happy while in. 

Reports from representative papers, from the Springfield (Mass.) 
Republican and the New York Times on the east to the Portland Oregon¬ 
ian and Eos Angeles Times on the west, show that women are employed 
in many departments of most of the metropolitan papers, some in respon¬ 
sible positions. Year by year they are taking more prominent parts. 
Consensus of opinion among these papers seems to be that women fit in 
better for departmental writing, such as society, clubs, dramatic and mu¬ 
sical criticism, and as feature writers. Opportunities for women as report¬ 
ers are considerably more limited than for men. Reasons assigned for 
this are: 

1. Long hours, frequently at night, and the strenuous character of 
the work are too much for woman’s physical endurance. 

2. Difficulty of women mingling on an equal footing with men of 
affairs and consequent difficulty of getting the news. 

The schools of journalism at Northwestern University and the Uni¬ 
versity of Washington report that their women graduates do their best 


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work in advertising, specialized types of reporting, editing women’s pages, 
publicity work and magazine writing. Few of their graduates do editorial 
writing or hold executive positions. One woman graduate of the Univer¬ 
sity of Washington is receiving $5,000 a year as an executive in an adver¬ 
tising company. Both report that editors complain that the turnover is 
too great, as women marry and leave the profession. 

Statistics on this from Columbia University and the University of 
Missouri: 

Columbia, 1913-1922: 86 women graduates, 17 married, or nearly 20 
per cent. 

Missouri, 1910-1923: 151 women graduates, 47 married, or over 30 
per cent. 

Those graduates of schools of journalism who are working in special 
fields, particularly advertising and magazine work report no difficulties; 
they say any girl can succeed if she wishes to. Those holding regular 
newspaper jobs give a gloomier picture. They dwell upon the difficulty 
in getting jobs, hard work and the small pay. The prospect is not bright 
for the common garden variety of reporter but the girl who is in earnest, 
sincere, and determined and who loves the work for its own sake regard¬ 
less of handicaps is sure to succeed. 

Women are passing through an important transition; they are chang¬ 
ing and growing, a new order of woman is being evolved and a new 
order of journalism must be provided for them. As they grow, they de¬ 
mand better papers. Women writers can furnish the new and better 
journalism for women, a journalist requiring more ability, more char¬ 
acter, higher ideals, greater faith in women, greater expectations for 
women. Journalism must want something women can give; then oppor¬ 
tunities for women in journalism will become enlarged. The woman in 
the newspaper world will probably not get rich, but there is something 
splendid about engaging in a business in which the glint of gold is only 
incidental. 


Advertising As a Career for Women 

By Miss Elizabeth Bickford 
Of N. W. Ayer & Son, Chicago 

In the old days of Quaker meetings, men sat on one side of the room 
and women on the other. An actual partition could not have separated 
them more thoroughly. Such a situation is typical of the working of the 
minds of men and women in days gone by. There was separation and 
the world needs no more of it. It fosters misunderstanding if nothing 
worse. We need correlation today, not separation, in order that the best 
from the experience of each one can be welded into solace for the world’s 


woes. 


News and the Newspaper 


87 


There are instances of correlation in the work of men and women that 
we are all familiar with. Home-making needs primarily the intelligence 
of the woman, we are accustomed to think; but actually a real home is a 
commingling of ideas, a co-operation, a partnership. 

The profession of school-teaching, so long open to women, is so 
established in society that we scarcely pause to realize how creditably 
women and men are correlating their work there. 

Business too, has long had its doors open to earnest women. How¬ 
ever, they were side doors. I refer to secretarial work. The secretarial 
side door has swung wide to let in steady, reliable, dependable, responsible 
women. They are accomplishing magnificently but mostly without recog¬ 
nition. Many a big business would almost halt if those quiet, efficient 
private secretaries were suddenly subtracted. 

Advertising is for women the front door of business. Such an open 
entrance, however, brings greater attention from without and within and 
adds responsibility and requirements. 

To enter the door most effectively we must put aside all sense of per¬ 
sonal vanity. For centuries it has been a blockade around us. It renders 
us ineffectual and leaves us behind in the business race. 

We do not of necessity learn to lose a sense of vanity but we do all 
learn that there are no exemptions from hard knocks because we are 
women. This lesson well learned is a time saver. 

Personality is a word we hear much of today, but in business it is 
discounted in the matter of employment or discharge. We gain and keep 
work, rather, on ability. 

Depreciation and appreciation swing women like a pendulum. When 
we cease to pout over one or become too elated over the other we will 
be far ahead and much happier. 

Do you like the word career? I feel an unpleasant connotation! Has 
there not been a fear that careers for women mean loss of womanliness! 
Let us rather think of work—going about one’s business day by day. The 
world is correct enough in valuing womanliness. It needs a womanly 
woman as much as a manly man. The gentleman has long been in the 
business world—incidentally he is able to remain a gentleman there. Let 
us also send out the gentlewoman with blessing and encouragement. She 
can take with her refinement and gentleness, formerly looked for only in 
the home. Eventually she will feel as at ease, natural and lovable in the 
business world as at home. But she need not go forth as a reformer. She 
has only to join forces in the world’s work with men of high ideals who 
have gone before. 

Now that there are women at work in the world, what of advertising 
as a business for them? Advertising is mostly a turning-to. But there 
must be more in a definition: a turning-to-good, is better. In other 
words, the telling of good news. The news must be good. Bad soap, for 


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instance, can be sold once by calling it good, but it cannot be sold twice 
to the same buyer. No advertiser can successfully sell unless he has good 
goods. The same law applies to the one who sells advertising; for al¬ 
though he sells ideas only, and works with mental tools, he must prove 
their worth in works. 

Methods of advertising have become so perfected that only good 
goods, good advertisers and good advertising can stand the competition. 
The result is a higher standard of business principles. It involves a big 
housecleaning. Order is the very foundation; system is the successful 
operation; honor is the bond by which business stands; justice is the good 
will that accompanies growth and prosperity. The housecleaning must 
be gone through with before one even dares seek and expect public con¬ 
fidence. 

Advertising is a good business. Then is it good for women, to be 
active in a business which is constructive, progressive and inspirational? I 
find it so. 


News and the Newspaper 


89 


The Writers of Fiction 

A Forward Glance at Fiction 

By Miss Dorothy Scarborough 
Columbia University 

This is the day of fiction. 

There have been certain ones who thought they foresaw the passing 
of the novel when the movie began to flicker across the screen. But as 
a matter of fact, more stories and novels have been published since movies 
began than ever before. The screen has helped to sell many a novel. 

Now there are pessimists who think they see the decay of the 
printed word in the far-flung word of the radio. But it is a matter of 
record among publishers that radio readings help to boost the sales of 
books. And so we may be sure that no other art or invention is likely 
to crowd out the published story. 

There are some who deplore what they call the breakdown of the 
novel, in the matter of plot and method, but they are, I think, needlessly 
alarmed. Most novels have enough plot to serve as a skeleton to hold 
the flesh together, and it is not probable that many writers, however much 
they tried, could achieve the rambling obscurity of Joyce. The probabilities 
are that the novel or story isn’t going to perish from the earth, nor go to 
pieces, but is here to stay and will go on increasing in popularity and power. 
But what will that popularity express, and how will that power be used? 

Many people, readers, critics, ministers, persons interested in the 
general welfare and morals of the land as well as in literary values, are 
asking "What is the matter with our fiction?” Undoubtedly there have 
been changes in the tone of it in the last few years—in material and 
spirit. Some of these changes are definitely for good, and we should re¬ 
joice in them. There has been an extension of the range of subjects 
for fiction, in the new science, material and mental, psychology, sociology 
and so forth. The airplane added new thrills to our fiction, and the radio 
will surely become a complication and element of solution in our plots. 
There has, I think, been a deepening of feeling in our fiction, a sense of 
realities of life. There isn’t so much purely sentimental mush, not so 
much of the irrational optimism that shuts its eyes tight against the truth, 
less of what has been called the Pollyanesthetics of fiction. 

There are various causes which, as I see it, have helped to bring about 
undesirable aspects of our fiction, even though these same influences have 
been partly helpful as well. Few things are unmixed evil or good. 

One thing is too much imitation of foreign literature. One who lives 
in New York City and sees the preponderance of the foreign element there 
and notes its effects on our American ideals and institutions and morals, 


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as well as on literature, must be thoughtful regarding this point. It is 
good for America and Americans to be hospitable to other ideas, to be 
open-minded, to receive the good from other lands, the broadening in¬ 
fluence of other cultures, other traditions. But, as I see it, it is not good 
for us to be swamped by them. The melting pot theory is as fallacious with 
respect to books as with respect to citizenship. 

At the O. Henry memorial dinner given by the Society of Arts and 
Sciences this spring, Robert Bridges, editor of Scribner’s Magazine, made 
a speech on this point. He said that we were having too much Slavic 
pessimism in our fiction for it to be true to American conditions. The 
despair of the Russian soul is comprehensible and real, the result of cen¬ 
turies of serfdom and oppression. But conditions in America, even at 
their worst, are not so hopeless as in Russia; so the hopelessness seems 
a pose, an insincerity, when written of America. The same criticism might 
be made of the German expressionism in the drama and fiction. 

There has been too much attempt to introduce into American fiction 
the standards of the Latin races with respect to social morality. The re¬ 
sult is displeasing, not only on the ground of morals, but of art. for the 
effect here is likely to be that of awkwardness, clumsiness, in place of the 
deftness of the foreign artist—as Anatole France, for example. Dr. 
Dorothy Brewster of Columbia University recently gave a talk on that 
topic, showing how clumsy Sherwood Anderson, Hergesheimer and others 
were in comparison with continental authors, when dealing with sex. Sex 
freedom has not been a part of our literary tradition in America, and it 
seems imitative, the authors ill at ease. 

Our fiction has been overmuch influenced, not only by foreign fiction, 
but also by critics in America who are scornful of American ideals and 
traditions and accomplishments, urging the superiority of foreign standards. 
Critics of the Mencken-Nathan type, for example, have by the vehemence 
of their ridicule and the constant reiteration of their credos had an effect. 
They make fun of whatever seems to them to have the faintest trace 
of what they call Puritanism. That quality which seems to native Amer¬ 
icans—at least a number of us—something to be proud of in its dignity, 
its austerity, its moral strength, its restraint, is anathema to these critics, 
and they seek to laugh it out of court. I for one, would choose Puritanism 
in preference to Menckenism. Yet Mencken is clever and in various ways 
has had invigorating effect in criticism. 

The critics who deride prohibition as un-American, who sneer at the 
Christian religion, who think America a nation of slaves and hypocrites 
and morons—yet who, strangely, prefer to live here instead of settling 
in Europe—have had a decided effect on the tone of our fiction. They 
have some good things to say, and they have stimulated criticism, but they 
have had a disproportionate influence on our literature, as I see it. 

There has been too much of the element of the risque, the indecent. 


News and the Newspaper 


91 


in our fiction of late, I feel. People explain all sorts of things on the 
basis of a general lowering of standards as a result of the war. But there 
may be many reasons why certain writers have got away from the ideal 
of fiction as an art which should refine and enrich life. Some of them 
apparently think that if a novel enriches the author and publishers, that 
is all that is important. 

Can anyone doubt the influence of such fiction on the reading public? 
John Jay Chapman says, “An act is but the residuum of a thought,” and 
what thoughts are put into the minds of impressionable youth by such 
tales? Marriage has no sanctity, divorce is as lightly entered into as a 
week-end visit, and all the basic moralities are abolished as narrowing 
conventions. 

There is a certain new type of fiction which seems capable of a partic¬ 
ularly harmful influence. This is the fiction that describes the “younger 
generation”—how sick we have got of the repetition of the term—as kicking 
over all the traces, breaking through all restraints, and engaging in orgies 
of liberty that brook no control from old fogy parents; the fiction that 
describes high-school girls and sub-debutantes as sporting their pocket 
flasks, and staying out till dawn unchaperoned, scornful of parental pleas 
or social conventions, thinking it amusing to be slightly intoxicated, and 
engaging in promiscuous “petting”. Some of this is cleverly written and 
many a young girl has yearned to be a Scott Fitzgerald heroine. 

Another type of unwholesomeness is the emphasis on the abnormal in 
psychology. Abnormalities do exist, of course, but to give them undue 
emphasis makes it appear that they are both more natural and more im¬ 
portant than the sane and ordinary. For instance, such a thing as mater¬ 
nal love may be twisted and distorted into something hideous and harm¬ 
ful. 

Then there is the revolting case of exhibitionism in Sherwood Ander¬ 
son’s “Many Marriages”, where John Webster (how the shades of Noah 
and Daniel must resent his choice of name:) strips the coverings of de¬ 
cency from his soul and body alike before his wife and young daughter. 
Yet some of the cleverest critics in New York have acclaimed that as a 
great piece of work. 

Revolt against unwholesome aspects of fiction and drama is beginning 
to show itself both in Europe and America. In quarters where we should 
least expect it, there is condemnation of indecency, not by the authority 
of the law, not by official censors, but by spontaneous public opinion. In 
Paris Victor Marguerite, the author of a novel thought to be indecent, 
called “Ea Garconne,” was expelled from the Legion of Honor. I don’t 
know or recall a case where an American author was dismissed from a 
literary body because of an improper book, though I have heard of a novel¬ 
ist who recently lost his newspaper job because of an indecent book he 
published and circulated privately. If literary bodies expressed repug- 


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nance for improper fiction, that would have more influence than the efforts 
of John Sumner and his vice committee. 

Ministers and editors and officials have spoken out on the subject. 
A few books have been suppressed, but some of them have been restored, 
winning their case on appeal. All know the hot discussion that has re¬ 
cently arisen in New York, having its start in a protest by Justice Ford, 
whose daughter showed him a passage from a book from a circulating 
library, and who called a meeting of citizens. A bill proposed at Albany 
was considered too drastic and dangerous by most cool-headed persons, 
with too great possibilities of irrational prejudice. Had it been less drastic, 
it would probably have passed. 

How should the desire for greater decency and higher ideals in fiction 
be most effectively expressed? Too radical laws would probably do harm. 
Strict censorship alone would not be enough, for that might condemn books 
possessing enough literary art and sincerity of purpose to rise above vul¬ 
garity, and might leave untouched cheap sensational narratives, such as 
“The Sheik,” for example. 

Perhaps the best, the only efficient way, is by awakening public opin¬ 
ion. If publishers who bring out questionable books realized that they 
alienated a large part of their readers, they would soon react to public 
opinion. Book dealers who found their valued customers objected to their 
exploiting salacious fiction would no doubt respond to this senti¬ 
ment. Yet this scheme has its dangers, too. The best way is to seek 

to elevate public taste to the extent that it will recognize good books and 
discard the objectionable. Recently several publishers’ lists have started 
off with the significant statement that the books listed below were clean 
books. 

What of fiction in America of the near future? No doubt we’ll still 
have a flood of the usual stereotyped, conventional stuff. There will prob¬ 
ably still be a certain amount of the salacious, unless public opinion stops 
it. The millennium is not yet at hand. 

But I think I discern influences that will make for a higher type of 
short story and novel. We have felt a deepening and broadening in¬ 
fluence of European drama and fiction in the last few years, because 

translations have been more accessible and better than before. We have 
had a period of imitation, and now perhaps we’ll learn to rely more on 
ourselves. I think we’ll use our own themes more, our own national 
materials and ideas. And where are to be found bigger, more inspiring 
themes?—more dramatic, than our American struggles and problems fur¬ 
nish? Our fiction needs to be more essentially American. We are too 
close to our pioneer ancestors to be imitators for long. We need to let 
the cleansing winds of our prairies sweep over our fiction, the strong 
sunlight beat upon it. And we in the south especially have a wealth of 
amazing literary possibilities as yet practically untouched. 


News and the Newspaper 


93 


I think our fiction presently will have more realism of the better sort, 
a realism that will not falsify life by over-emphasis on sordid or petty 
or ugly details. 

I think that our fiction will have more idealism. I feel that the chief 
lack in our books today is the lack of ideals. Books are perishing for 
want of vision. Books will come I think to be written more in a spirit 
of sincerity and less in commercialism, and will bear out more the saying 
of Keats in a letter, “More and more I come to feel that good writing, 
next to good living, is the top thing in the world,” At heart we Americans 
are a nation of idealists, and no fiction will satisfy us permanently that 
leaves out ideals. 

I believe that the fiction in the near future will have in it more of the 
religious. Signs are not wanting to show that there is really an awaken¬ 
ing to man’s need for something higher than himself to reach up toward, 
something stronger than himself to cling to. Even in New York City in 
the past year church membership and attendance have shown a greater 
increase than for a long time. Magazines and papers are calling atten¬ 
tion to the revival of interest in personal religion. 

Of late we haven’t been giving expression to the best that is in us. 
The authors haven’t, nor have we, the readers, who are the authors’ final 
critics and controllers. As parents have neglected their children, have let 
them get away from discipline and restraint too long, so we, the readers, 
that really are omnipotent ones, have relaxed our wholesome restraint 
over our fiction writers. Isn’t it time we recognized more our responsibil¬ 
ity and used our authority wisely? We, the readers, are the ones who have 
the final power, and ours is the ultimate responsibility. 

DISCUSSION 

Question: What is the personnel of your classroom like? 

Answer: The people in my extension course in Columbia are a dif¬ 
ferent group from any other set of students that I know anything about. 
They vary in ages from the undergraduate to the grandmother and the 
grandfather; people of various professions who have time, perhaps, to 
take one course and are busy the rest of the time. I have had social settle¬ 
ment workers, teachers, lawyers, advertising men, stenographers. I have 
various newspaper men. One writer is a colonel, who is writing delightful 
stories of army life. Another is an assistant professor in history, and 
still another, the head of a clinic of abnormal psychology who wishes to 
put into fiction some of the cases she has had. Another is the widow of 
a general on the personal staff of the czar, who had to flee from Russia 
to save her life. She writes admirable stories of Russia. Scribner’s took 
the second story she wrote. 

I do not dictate to my students what they should write—I have nothing 


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to say until they come to me with their stories. Then I have a good deal 
to say. 

Question: Is it advisable to follow a skeleton or plan in writing a 
novel or story, or is it better to let the story “write itself”? 

Answer: I do not believe in formulas. If you have too much of 
rules, they kill the story. But a working plan is necessary. An architect 
has a plan for a house, a dressmaker for a dress, and so forth. They do 
not rely on the inspiration of the moment. 

It is true, the plot sometimes runs away from the working plan. 
Sometimes, the story is livelier than the author—but the author simply 
must chase and catch up. 

Question: How did you write your book? Did you follow a work¬ 
ing plan? 

Answer: The idea had been in my mind for years. The idea of 
cotton and the power it had over human life fascinated me. I wanted to 
show the complexity of its relation to human life. Therefore, I had to 
deal with different groups of characters in different stages of the social 
scale. 

I had to deal with the wealthy plantation owner and his family, who 
had leisure, ease, culture and wealth, because that was one aspect of the 
situation. Then there were the problems of the tenant farmer and his 
;family—which required another group of characters. Also, the farmer 
in between. 

In this way I worked in some of the different problems and complica¬ 
tions that cotton brings into human life. To me, it seemed that cotton 
was the principal character, and the protagonist was rather complex- 
weather conditions, insect pests, economic conditions, wars, floods, etc. 
These were the enemies that cotton had to fight. No one character in the 
book was as important to me as cotton. 

Question: Is a plot necessary to a story? What is the position of 
the sketch, the anecdote, the incident? 

Answer: A story without plot must be written a great deal more 
carefully and skillfully than one with plot. Katherine Mansfield can 
write up her ideas without much plot. But even in her work the stories 
that stay longer in our minds are those that have plot, as well as character 
revelation. 

It is safer to have plot—for that makes a double claim on the reader’s 
attention. Description is not enough. Character can best be shown in 
action. 

An excellently written episode has much opportunity for recognition. 

I think we should have more latitude in the matters of sketch and episode. 
They have great literary charm, but as market conditions are now, there 
is less chance for them than for the story. The magazines are rather rigid 
in their demands. 


News and the Newspaper 


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The New Dialect Story 

By Robert L. Ramsay 

Professor of English, University of Missouri 

Our earlier dialect writers relied overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, 
on distorted spelling for their effects. The flood of dialect fiction and 
poetry which set in in England in the earlier half of the last century, and in 
America with Bret Harte in 1870—though its beginnings may be traced 
back to the days of Shakespeare and Chaucer, or even earlier—placed its 
chief reliance on the misplaced letter and the apostrophe. 

But there are other and better ways to indicate dialect besides spelling 
—or rather mis-spelling—as some writers have always known, and as our 
younger poets, dramatists, and story-tellers are coming more and more 
to realize. It is the discovery of these better, truer, and more effective 
ways in recent years that is bringing into our literature what I have ven¬ 
tured to call the “New Dialect Story”. 

I have here a series of extracts arranged in chronological order from 
writers of negro and Irish dialect. Let me read the negro passages: 

1889. From Maurice Thompson’s “Ben and Judas”:— 

“Lor’, hab mercy on two ole villyans an’ w’at dey done steal f’om one ’nudder. 
Spaycially, Lor’, forgib Mars’ Ben, lease he rich an’ free an’ he orter hab mo’ honah 
’bout ’im ’an ter steal f’om po’ nigger. I used to fink, Lor’, dat Mars’ Ben’s er mighty 
good man, but seem lak yer lately he gittin’ so on’ry at yo’ll be erbleeged ter hannel 
’im pooty sabage ef he keep on. Dey may be ’nough good lef’ in ’im ter pay fer de 
trouble ob foolin’ ’long wid ’im, but hit’s pow’ful doubtful, an’ dat’s er fac’. Lor’, 
I don’t edvise you’ ter go much outer yo’ way ter ’commodate sich er outdacious old 
sneak-t’ief an’ sich er-.” 

“Judas!” roared Ben, “yer jest stop right now!” 

“An’ bress dese watermillions w’at we’s erbout ter receib, amen!” concluded 
Judas. “Try er piece er dis here solid core. Mars’ Ben; hit look mighty jawleecious.” 

1880. From Joel Chandler Harris’ “Uncle Remus”:— 

“In dem days creeturs had lots mo’ sense dan dey got now; let ’lone dat, dey 
had sense same like folks. Hit was tech en go wid um, too, mon, en w’en dey make 
up der mines w’at hatter be done, ’twant mo’n menshun’d ’fo’ hit wuz done. Well, dey 
’lected dat dey hatter hole er ’sembly fer ter sorter straighten out marters en hear de 
complaints, en w’en de’ say cum dey wuz on han’. De Lion, he wuz dar, kase he wuz 
de king, en he hatter be dar. De Rhynossyhoss, he wuz dar, en de Elephant, he wuz 
dar, en de Cammils, en de Cows, en plum down ter de Crawfishes, dey wuz dar. Dey 
wuz all dar. En w’en de Lion shuck his mane, en tuck his seat in de big cheer, den 
de sesshun bekun fer ter commence.” 

1922. From T. S. Stribling’s “Birthright” :— 

“Yes, suh, dat medal uz guv to me fuh bravery. . . Day gim me dis heah fuh 
stobbin’ fo’ white men wid a baynit. ‘Fo’ God, niggah, I nevuh felt so square in 
all muh bo’n days as when I was a-jobbin’ de livuhs uh dem white men lak de ser¬ 
geant tol’ me to. . . Yes, suh, I nevuh wuz mo’ supprised in all muh life dan when 
I got dis medal fuh stobbin’ fo’ white men.” 

“She pokes along an’ walls huh eyes roun’ dis house lak a calf wid de splivins. . . 
Good Gawd! Mas’ Renfrew, whut diff’unce do it make whut Petuh say? Ain’t yuh 
foun’ out yit when a he-niggah an’ a she-niggah gits tuh peepin’ at each odder, whut 
dey says don’t lib in de same neighbo'hood wid whut dey does?” 

1922. From Octavus Roy Cohen’s “Focus Pokus” (S. E. P., Oct. 21) :— 

“What you uses yo’ haid fo’, Brother Slappey, is to keep yo’ brains from slippin’ 
out.” “You tell ’em, Brother Shoots. Brains is the one thing I ain’t got nuthin’ 
else but.” 



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“Will you jine me in a ice-cream soda, Miss Zinnia?” “Yas-suh, Brother 
Slappey, I won’t do nothin’ else.” “Which flavor?” “Pink. That’s the fondest kind 
I is of.” 

1922. From Hugh Wiley’s “The Red Tape Cutter” (S. E. P., Sept. 2) 

“Nevah seed so much work. Cap’n Jack got me draggin’ f’m sunup till de curse- 
you bell rings. On top all dat, heah’s dis work f’m de cap’ns wife—’nuff extry work 
to bear me down lower dan snake’s stummick. . . Nevah do seem to run out of work 
roun’ dis place. Come Sat’day night Ise sho glad. . . Neveh seed such a slow-draggin 
Sat’day. Seems like dey los’ count. Whut day dis?” . 

“Day Wens’day. Reckon us kin las’ till Sat’day, but how come don t jus see. 
Not at de present minnit.” 

1921. From Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones”:— 

“Oh Lawd, Lawd! Lawd Jesus, heah my prayer! I’se a po’ sinner, a po’ sinner! 
I knows I done wrong, I knows itl When I cotches Jeff cheatin’ wid loaded dice 
my anger overcomes me and I kills him dead! Lawd, I done wrong! When dat guard 
hits me wid de whip, my anger overcomes me, and I kill him dead. Lawd, I done 
wrong! And down heah whar dese fool bush niggers raises me up to the seat o’de 
mighty, I steals all I could grab. Lawd, I done wrong! I knows it! I’se sorry! 
Forgive me, Lawd!” 

Joel Chandler Harris’ dialect has been extravagantly praised by some 
critics, but I am heretic enough to believe that it has been overrated. 
Harris knew the negro thoroughly, of course, and his dialect is free from 
many of the positive misrepresentations found in other and earlier writers; 
but its presentation is lacking in artistic economy and delicacy. Harris 
knew that the artist must tell the truth and nothing but the truth; but 
apparently he thought that he must also tell the whole truth, which is a 
mistake. And the main dependence of Harris and all his contemporaries 
was upon distorted spelling. It was apparently their chief aim to depart 
from standard spelling as often and as far as possible. They leave few 
words undistorted, and they overwork the apostrophe to an extent that 
must have driven typesetters to despair. 

Taking their distorted spellings as a whole, we may classify them 
into four groups: those that are meaningless, those that are ambiguous, 
those that are misleading, and finally, those that are really effective and 
defensible. The worst are the positively misleading spellings, that indicate 
a pronunciation that does not exist. These gross errors, as I have said, 
are very rare in Harris, but not so in the pages of other earlier writers of 
negro dialect like Miss Stowe. A good example is the impossible word 
“Massa”, which is almost a hall mark of the whole school of Northern 
writers who drew their negro characters out of their own imaginations 
at long range. The negro said “Mahster”, and sometimes “Mahs”, but 
he never said “Massa”. 

Much more common is the second offense, the use of meaningless 
spellings. We might call dialect of this sort “eye-dialect”, for like “eye 
rimes” like tough and cough, love and move, they are intended solely for 
the reader. Glaring examples are Harris’ sesshun, menshun’d, cammils, 
and cum. This type of spelling perpetrates a kind of slander on Uncle 
Remus; for certainly that venerable darky pronounced the words session, 


News and the Newspaper 


97 


mention, camel and come in no way different from the most cultured of 
his white masters. Harris is also accustomed to distort the spelling of 
almost all the little unaccented words, such as a, and, to, for, you, etc., in 
the mouths of his negro characters, as if white speakers were any more 
addicted than negroes to such pedantic and unnatural pronunciations as 
touch and go, try a piece, what had to be done, instead of the normal and 
universal reduced and unstressed forms that such spellings imply. To 
spell the word is as is when a white man says it, but as iz in the mouth of 
a negro is not so much dialect writing as race prejudice. 

In the third place, there are those distorted spellings which must be 
termed ambiguous—cases where there is a genuine peculiarity of the dialect 
pronunciation to be indicated, but the means chosen to indicate it is likely 
to convey the wrong impression. An example may be taken from the 
negro equivalent of the word Master, mentioned before. Instead of the 
misleading Massa, Harris writes, quite correctly, Marse, indicating the 
characteristic negro broad a sound by an inserted r. Of course, he means 
the r to be silent. This is satisfactory enough to white readers of the 
South or of New England, where it always is silent in such positions; 
but in the Middle West the letter r is still very much alive, its insertion 
suggests a pronunciation that is entirely untrue. 

After eliminating the distorted spellings that are misleading, mean¬ 
ingless, or ambiguous, there remain those distortions that are really ef¬ 
fective—a mere fraction of the mass. Such spellings as hab and dey, fac’ 
and tech, villyans, spaycially, outdacious, and water millions, are not open 
to any of the criticisms that I have just been making. They are perfectly 
truthful and clear and add to the humor of the dialect picture. But even 
these effective distortions would gain by being used more sparingly. 

Besides the distorted spelling, which is a matter of the letter, there 
is also dialect vocabulary, which is a matter of the word; there is a dialect 
idiom, which is a matter of the phrase or clause; and most subtle and 
delicate of all, there is dialect rhythm and cadence, which is a matter of 
the sentence as a whole. 

All these elements would be found, if there were time, in Harris’ 
negro dialect, but buried beneath the more obvious and superfluous changes 
in spelling. To find them detached and unadulterated, let us turn to the 
Irish field. In such an early writer of Irish dialect as Samuel Lover we 
find, as in Harris, the old dependence mainly on distorted spelling, with 
merely incidental use of other elements, such as vocabulary, idiom and 
rhythm. But in recent writers, William Butler Yeats and John Willing- 
ton Synge, there appears a conspicuous emancipation. Let me illustrate: 

1832. From Samuel Lover’s “Barney O’Reirdon”:— 

“Why thin,” said one, “that field o’whate o’ Michael Coghlan, is the finest field 
o’ whate mortial eyes was ever set upon—divil the likes iv it myself ever seen far 
or near.” 

“Throth thin sure enough,” said another, “it promises to be a fine crap anyhow. 


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and myself can’t help thinkin’ it quare that Micke Coghlan, that’s a plain spoken, 
quite (quiet) man, and simple like, should have finer craps than Pether Kelly o’ the 
big farm beyant, that knows all about the great saycrets o’ the airth, and is knowledge¬ 
able to a degree, and has all the hard words that iver was coined at his fingers’ ends.” 

“Faith, he has a power o’ blasthogue (persuasive speech) about him sure enough,” 
said the former speaker, “if that could do him any good.” 

1902. From W. B. Yeats’ “Cathleen Ni Houlihan”:— 

“There’s an old woman coming down the road. I don’t know, is it here she’s 
coming?” 

“I hope Patrick has brought Delia’s fortune (dowry) with him safe, for fear her 
people might go back on the bargain and I after making it. . . Yes, I made the bar¬ 
gain well for you, Michael. Old John Cahel would sooner have kept a share of this 
awhile longer. . . Indeed, I wish I had the luck to get a hundred pounds, or twenty 
pounds itself, with the wife I married.” 

1907. From J. M. Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World”:— 

“And when the airs is warming, in four months or five, it’s then yourself and 
me should be pacing Neifin in the dews of night, the times sweet smells do be rising, 
and you’ll see a little, shiny new moon, maybe, sinking on the hills. . . It’s little you’ll 
think if my love’s a poacher’s, or an earl’s itself, when you’ll feel my two hands 
stretched around you, and I squeezing kisses on your puckered lips, till I’d feel a 
kind of pity for the Lord God is all ages sitting lonesome in His golden chair. . . If 
the mitred bishops seen you that time, they’d be the like of holy prophets, I’m think¬ 
ing, do be straining the bars of Paradise to lay eyes on the Lady Helen of ^Troy 
and she abroad, pacing back and forward, with a nosegay in her golden shawl.” 

The reader who first comes across dialect of this sort is apt to feel 
that he is not reading dialect at all. It certainly is not the old kind of 
dialect. The difference leaps to the eyes, and amounts almost to a revolu¬ 
tion. The newer method is less obvious and less noisy than the old, but 
surely far more effective. It is dialect no longer blazoned forth by ex¬ 
ternal dress, but dialect that has become an inner thing, almost spiritualized. 

What the writers of the Irish Renascence have substituted for the 
old methods is mainly a skillful use of Irish syntax, based, we are told, 
on the constructions of the native Gaelic language. When Yeats writes, 
“I don’t know is it here she’s coming?” or “for fear her people might go 
back on the bargain and I after making it ” or “the luck to get a hundred 
pounds, or twenty pounds itself he is merely giving us literal transla¬ 
tions of the idioms in the Gaelic original. 

A still further step in the advance of dialect technique was made by 
the Irish dramatist Synge. In his work we have the triumph of a fourth 
element of dialect—the one variously known as cadence, rhythm, or speech 
melody. The terminology is new and unsettled, but the thing is old and 
familiar. As a matter of fact, the very first element of speech by which 
we all detect the stranger and recognize his dialect is, probably, not his 
peculiar pronunciation of some of our words, nor his strange new words, 
nor yet his unfamiliar idioms; it is his new speech-tune that strikes our 
ear. We are apt to characterize it vaguely as a “drawl” or a “lilt” or an 
“accent”. This apparently intangible element, which inheres not in the 
particular sound, word, or phrase, but in the peculiar turn or swing of 
the whole sentence, Synge was the first to employ consciously as his chief 
means of indicating dialect. It is his special glory to have recaptured, as 
no other man had done before him, the authentic rhythm of Irish speech. 


News and the Newspaper 


99 


This technical advance has by no means been so completely achieved 
on this side of the Atlantic. Perhaps enough time has not yet elapsed for 
the new ideas of Yeats and Hardy and Synge to percolate into the prac¬ 
tice of our dialect writers. Perhaps we are too much in love with the 
grotesque to feel any such repugnance to the earlier technique as the 
English and Irish writers do; for certainly one of the strongest notes 
of our whole American literature is our passion for the grotesque. 

In conclusion, perhaps we may deduce a few practical rules for pres¬ 
ent-day would-be dialect writers. The first is: spare that apostrophe; use 
as little distorted spelling as possible. Misleading and meaningless spelling 
should be entirely excluded; ambiguous spellings should at least be min¬ 
imized; and even effective distortions should be used economically. Sec¬ 
ondly, limit the use of peculiar dialect words to cases where the context 
makes them readily intelligible. Thirdly, prefer the dialect idiom as a 
method of presentation, provided it is really characteristic and not merely 
a vulgarism common to illiterate speakers everywhere. Finally, remem¬ 
ber that cadence or rhythm offers a promising new field for exploration by 
dialect writers with delicate ears; it is a subtle and effective method, and 
by no means so difficult of indication as it might seem to be. 


Why Do Authors Write? 

By Miss Temple Bailey 
Author of “The Dim Lantern,” etc. 

My subject is not original. It was suggested recently to an authors’ 
group as a good topic for discussion. The result was interesting, but not 
illuminating. Few of those who analyzed their motives spoke the whole 
truth or even the half of it. Yet they did not willingly perjure themselves. 
They simply did not know. The apple had, as it were, hung on the tree, 
and they had eaten. 

The reasons they gave resolved themselves rather monotonously into 
two divisions—they had written because of the lure of royalties or be¬ 
cause of the urge of authorship. 

As for myself, I refused to talk about it. I felt that on my feet I 
should say things that I didn’t mean. The tongue is, as all of us know, 
more indiscreet than the pen. There is no time to rewrite. One says it, 
and the ear of the audience has it. One cannot, as it were, correct proof. 

But refusing to talk had, perhaps, a Freudian effect on me. I found 
myself asking constantly of my subsconscious self, “Why do I write?” 
And I still want to know. 

In the first place, then, I had no thought in early youth of a career, 
and even now I have to pinch myself to see if I am really awake when I 
see my portrait on the jacket of best-selling books. 


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The things that led me at last into the paths of literature were not 
unique. I liked to know that I could do the trick, and I liked the checks 
which followed. But what has kept me at it? That’s the question I ask 
myself. Why do I, in these days when I might be free as air, still stay 
at my desk and put black marks on sheets of paper? 

Well, I think that, boiled down to the last analysis, it is because I like 
to travel. And what I love is not the end of the journey, but the things 
that happen by the way. 

I remember a gathering years ago when I, a breathless novice, sat 
among a group of seasoned writers and heard one of them say casually, 
“We who have arrived.” 

I didn’t like the sound of it. It seemed to me then, as it seems to me 
now, that authorship is a pilgrimage, in which one climbs the mountain but 
never reaches the peak. 

And if we don’t love to climb, that’s the end of it. We might as well 
drop our pens and find some other occupation. 

Of course, at first, we don’t believe it. Success shines ahead of us as 
something very definite. If we are young and feminine, we think of it 
in terms of lovely frocks, to be worn when the world is at our feet. If 
we are young and masculine, we may think of it in terms less sartorial, 
perhaps, but no less triumphant. Success is, to us, indeed, in those early 
and aspiring days, something as definite as a good dinner, a good play, 
or a good horse. We are going to enjoy it in that way. Gloriously. But 
when it really comes—when our checks are in five figures, when the 
critics are weighing us in the balance, and when our readers are crying 
for more, we find happiness isn’t, after all, in the limelight with the lovely 
frock, but in a certain quiet circle made by our shaded lamp on a blue 
blotter. And we’d rather follow the fortunes of little Jane Barnes, our 
latest heroine, than our own fortunes in lion-hunting circles. 

Of course, artistic success doesn’t always run parallel with commercial 
success; some of us have one kind, and some the other. A few, beloved 
by the gods, have both. But whatever our mode of arrival, whether by 
the road of popularity or by the road of fine and true workmanship, the 
thi,ng is not to arrive, but to follow the road. 

And so I have followed it—with the characters I create; from Con¬ 
trary Mary, who refused to be anything but a prig and a puppet until I 
wrestled with her and made her live to Jane of “The Dim Lantern”, who 
took things absolutely in her own hands and galloped away from me. 

In all there have been seven journeys—seven novels and a book of 
short stories. Seven milestones along the trail. Some of the miles have 
been hard going. I should hate to follow them again. But it has been 
good always to rest at the end. 

Well, that is why I write. It’s a great game, and the best thing I 
know. Life has always seemed to me a sort of seafaring adventure, with 


News and the Newspaper 


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the ship at full sail, and the horizon ever ahead. There have been fair 
winds and foul but the ship has never foundered. And I hope I shall 
not make harbor until that last voyage which shall sweep me toward the 
broad waters of eternity. 

Novel Writing—Its Cause and Cure 

By Jay Wiujam Hudson 

Professor of Philosophy, University of Missouri; Author of “Abbe Pierre” 

I have been listening to the euphonious diction of President Dodge 
as he introduced the various speakers on this afternoon’s program. I 
thought, however, that when he came to me, he was a little extravagant 
in his praise. 

I never wrote a novel, and I doubt that I am able to write a novel. 

Three years ago, I went to France and spent a delightful summer 
in Gascony. When I came back, I wrote down my impressions of the 
little village in which I stayed, more for my own pleasure than for any 
ulterior motive. I called the product, “Abbe Pierre.” Incidentally, I sent 
the manuscript to a publisher. I had great doubts of its being accepted. 
Indeed, I made a wager with a friend that it would not be accepted. To 
my surprise, I lost. 

The publisher further surprised me by calling it a novel. It confirmed 
my opinion that almost anything can be called a novel these days! 

I am not here to make a speech; only to extend to you a brief greet¬ 
ing. Your president wrote me that he would put me down on the pro¬ 
gram for some subject as, “Novels of Yesterday and Today.” But I told 
him that I did not know anything about novels—that all I read in that 
line were detective stories, and other fiction that is manufactured to please 
the tired business man, something with plenty of plot to it. If I have 
happened to write anything good, it may have been a reaction from the 
sorts of things I usually read and enjoy. 

The subject, “Novel Writing; Its Cause and Cure,” suggests that 
novel writing is a sort of disease. It is, with some writers, whose slogan 
is “A book a year,” or even “A book every six months!” After all, most 
writers have it in them to write about one really good book. But after 
doing that—if they do it at all—they think that they must set up as pro¬ 
fessional “authors”. Now, in my opinion, to be merely a writer by profes¬ 
sion—nothing else—is one of the most damnable careers a man can choose. 
Imagine a red-blooded man or woman sitting down to a desk and saying, 
“Here goes! I shall now write for the rest of my life!” The business 
of a man is to live and take part in the civilization about him; incidentally, 
if out of the life he lives, he has something to write, let him write it. The 
trouble with art in all generations has been that it has been superimposed 


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upon life, instead of being the flower and bloom of life itself. A building 
is built, and then ornamentation is added in the name of beauty; yet, in 
true architecture, the beauty of a building is an integral part of its being, 
not an afterthought. 

So it is with the art of writing. It is nothing in itself; it is every¬ 
thing as the intimate expression of a civilization. 

Reaching the Reading Public 

By E. Haldeman-Juijus 

President, Haldeman-Julius Company, Publishers, Girard, Kan. 

A short time ago a prominent newspaper referred to Girard, Kan., 
where the Haldeman-Julius Company is located, as “the literary capital of 
the United States.” Without a full knowledge of what is being done in 
Girard, one is astonished that a little county seat town “out where the 
West begins,” a faint dot at the edge of the great Kansas prairie, should 
be designated by a metropolitan journal as the American center of culture. 

The title of literary capital has been gained for Girard by an entirely 
new publishing enterprise that is just four years old. There was, in the 
beginning, merely a newspaper plant, not mechanically adapted for book 
publishing, and the vision of certain literary needs that had never been 
supplied in this country. I felt that the country wanted a cheap series 
of good books—something that everybody could buy. I believed there 
were millions of people in America who were filled with a desire to read 
the best in literature, but who were prevented from realizing this desire 
by the prohibitive charges. In my private library were beautiful volumes, 
bound in sumptuous style, with large fancy type, many charming decora¬ 
tions and margins almost as wide as the space devoted to the reading 
matter. The prices of these books ran into dollars; yet the length of their 
contents would not exceed that of an ordinary magazine article. 

I knew that the> essential aim of a book is to be read. Why should 
not these classics be read by millions instead of by a few thousand? I 
felt sure the book publishing trade had grossly underrated the literary 
appreciation of the masses. The greatest literature is the closest to life. 

I think it is directly due to the immense success of the 10-cent pocket 
series of the Haldeman-Julius Company that the conception of the public 
taste in literature has been transformed within the past four years. If I 
had declared four years ago that “The Trial and Death of Socrates” 
could be made a best seller, what a laugh I should have got for by pains. 
Who would have believed several years ago that millions of copies of 
Shakespeare’s plays could be sold to the American people? Yet it has 
been done. 

Obviously, these classics have not been sold to what is generally re- 


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103 


garded as the reading public—that cultivated minority that has a sophis¬ 
ticated taste in art and literature. I have reached a new reading public— 
and a much larger one: the plain, busy, unpretentious masses; to be more 
precise, the world’s workers, in field, factory and office, the mechanical 
and professional classes who have not the leisure nor the mood for dil- 
letantism but have a direct urgent hunger for realistic contacts with life. 
I have, in short, the same public that buys Ford cars and goes to the 
movies. This public used to see the hero jump skyscrapers several nights 
in the week and picnic in the woods on Sundays. Now it reads Shakes¬ 
peare, Moliere, Balzac, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Oscar Wilde 
whenever it has five minutes to spare; and when it goes picnicking, it fills 
its pockets with the little blue booklets. 

The first two titles printed in the pocket series—the beginning of this 
“University in Print”—were “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” and “The 
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.” When these two titles sold from the start, 
I knew that the pocket series was definitely headed for success. 

The first two titles in the pocket series were printed on a couple of 
small job presses. The binding was performed in a similarly slow way. 
There was neither equipment nor organization to set, print, bind and dis¬ 
tribute these paper-covered volumes. It became quickly necessary to sup¬ 
ply these facilities. And as I brought out additional lists of titles—first 
a half-dozen, then a dozen, then fifty at a time—I was constantly hampered 
by the problem of production. Today the building occupied by the Halde- 
man-Julius Company is so crowded with new machinery—massive book 
presses, cutting, folding and stitching machines, linotypes, and huge vaults 
in which careful files are kept of the plates from which the books are 
printed—we are so crowded that immediate large additions to the building 
are imperative. One complete new structure is to be erected. 

The addition of mere machines has not been the only problem. The 
working methods of the plant have been carefully evolved to the point 
where there is no lost motion. We produce 6,000,000 books a month in 
our plant—and our selling record is never stationary; it grows always. 
This is a vast and intricate job; it requires the perfect co-ordination of 
all working factors. Everything is standardized. Our booklets are of 
uniform size, all are sixty-four pages in length, all set in the same type, 
printed on the same grade of paper, made up into forms, run through the 
presses, cut, folded and stitched to the same closely figured specifications. 
Distribution is as carefully planned as production. From the minute an 
order enters the plant it goes with efficient speed through an orderly 
process until the package of books is on its way to the customer. There 
remains one other factor: Reaching the public. 

How have I been able to reach such a large public? How have I 
created such an enormous demand for the pocket series? These ques¬ 
tions are frequently asked me. The obvious first thing to point out is 


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that I began by accurately judging what the public desired and giving it 
to them. I have proceeded from the beginning on the theory that the best 
is none too good for the average reader. At first, I simply selected titles 
of whose merit I was fully assured. But eventually I wished to obtain 
a more intimate and authentic view of the desires of the public. So I 
prepared a questionnaire, sent it to fifteen thousand names on my mailing 
list and received close to ten thousand replies. You can imagine how 
gratified I was at the unanimity with which these ten thousand representa¬ 
tive readers indicated their choice of sound things in literature, science, 
philosophy, history. 

Their order of choice was significant. My readers preferred history 
first, fiction second, then science, philosophy, religion, poetry, travel, essays, 
economics, drama, etc. They wanted the best in all of these fields. 

For a time I depended on my weekly paper, the Haldeman-Julius 
Weekly, to carry the news of the pocket series to the people. This medium 
produced results, well enough; an audience of half a million is a good 
one to begin with. But expansion was inevitable. To test the daily 
newspapers, I inserted an advertisement in the St. Louis Post- 
Dispatch—in the Sunday issue. The result was instantaneous and over¬ 
whelming. Similar success came from a test ad in the New Republic. 
This advertising was increased until now it covers the whole country, and 
not spasmodically but steadily. The pocket series is the most widely ad¬ 
vertised thing published today. 

I have another method of reaching the people, which is the well- 
known method of circulars. I have in Girard one of the largest mailing 
lists in the country; and great stacks of circulars, announcing new books 
added to the series and containing lists of clothbound books that we sell 
in addition to the pocket series, go out to this list. We add 4,000 names 
to our mailing list each day. We shall certainly sell more than 50,000,000 
books this year. 

Every writer wants an audience—and the largest possible audience. 
The greater number of people he can reach, the more effectively will he 
attain his object in writing; and the wider will be the appreciation of his 
efforts. 

Here is the great significance of the pocket series to writers. Poten¬ 
tially it offers to the writers of today the largest audience in all the history 
of literature. The actual audience is larger even than the staggering sales 
figures indicate. Nobody buys the pocket series for idle decorative pur¬ 
poses ; they are utterly utilitarian, these books are bought to be read; and 
the writers who write for the pocket series write to be read. 

They write directly, too, and in a sense intimately to this wonderful 
host of readers. The writer for the pocket series does not shoot in the 
dark. He aims carefully at a perfectly visible target. When I give a 
writer an assignment, he knows that the millions of readers of the pocket 


/ 


News and the Newspaper 105 

series are definitely interested in the subject about which he will write. 
Four years of publishing the pocket series have given me a pretty accurate 
knowledge of what the reading public wants. I study closely the cor¬ 
respondence from the readers of the pocket series; and I have described 
how I sent out questionnaires to sound the preferences of these millions 
of eager book buyers. I have one rule with my writers, from which I 
never vary. I always let them write about the subjects that they like. 
I know that a writer cannot produce a good piece of work unless he 
comes to the job with enthusiasm. 


106 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


Building an Editors' Clubhouse 

By E. S. Bronson 

The American, El Reno, Okla.; Vice-President for Oklahoma, National 
Editorial Association. 

Convinced that editors as well as laborers in other professions are en¬ 
titled to occasional respites from their heavy grind, the newspaper frater¬ 
nity in Oklahoma has erected a palatial clubhouse for the benefit of its 
members in the heart of the Wichita Mountains, and thus have achieved 
a record held by no other state, and, as far as can be determined, by no 
other press organization in the world. 

This clubhouse, dedicated in 1915 during the annual press association 
convention, has been a monument to the enterprise of the. Oklahoma Press 
Association. Every year it is crowded during the heated season by the 
fourth estaters from the entire state. Each year we have added to the 
equipment and beautified the surroundings until at present it is by far 
the most beautiful property to be found in Oklahoma’s greatest summer 
resort, Medicine Park. 

A movement had been launched during the year of 1914 for the erec¬ 
tion of a modest home for editors and when it was determined that the 
press of the entire state should be included in the plans, it was voted to 
furnish advertising space in order to finance the building. 

The railroads of Oklahoma, hard-pressed by the State Corporation 
Commission, desired to gain the favor of the public. They had made T. H. 
Beacom, general manager of the second district of the Rock Island Rail¬ 
way, with offices at El Reno, chairman of a committee to handle adver¬ 
tising material beneficial to the railways. When I approached him with 
the proposition of buying $16,000 of advertising, he consented readily, and 
from these funds the new edifice was constructed. The newspaper men 
were very generous in their donations of space, and I believe that the 
railroads found the venture profitable. 

In designing the building, we planned it in such a way that the entire 
membership of the association could be accommodated under the roof at 
one time. Eight inside rooms were provided, while on a wide sleeping 
porch on three sides of the building, were placed 250 cots. The first floor 
has a large auditorium, which is also used for a ballroom, additional 
sleeping room, or dining room. 

A community kitchen was incorporated in the structure, in which 
several stoves and sets of cooking utensils and tableware are provided. 
Thus an editor is enabled to have all the comforts of home without 
bringing his equipment with him. A wide veranda facing beautiful Medi- 


News and the Newspaper 


107 


cine Creek, adds much to the restfulness of the home. A roof garden 
crowns the building. 

When visitors had tried the conveniences of the clubhouse, they began 
to take more interest in it, and several donations of equipment were re¬ 
ceived. A beautiful table, valued at $1,000, and made of thousands of 
pieces of wood, was placed in the club by R. A. Long, prominent lumber 
man of Kansas City. The Western Newspaper Union installed a valuable 
phonograph, while the Daily Oklahoman gave a handsome set of leather 
furniture. 

Having successfully financed the erection of the building Oklahoma 
editors settled down to enjoy their home, but soon additional troubles 
began to arise. The upkeep of the building proved to be expensive, the 
services of a matron being required throughout the year. Painting, plumb¬ 
ing repairs and other items were constantly arising. The revenue from 
guests was entirely inadequate to take care of these items. 

Members of the association were charged 75 cents per day, while 
non-members paid double. Since the visits of the editors were rather 
spasmodic, it was found necessary to admit outsiders, and even these 
failed to put the home on a paying basis. 

At the association convention two years ago, an endowment scheme, 
whereby the editors gave notes for sums ranging from $50 to $1,000, pay¬ 
ing interest thereon at the rate of 6 per cent per annum, was inaugurated. 

This plan has proved partly successful, but there is a tendency on the 
part of many to ignore their obligation. As a result the association is 
gradually drifting into a position where the clubhouse is a white elephant. 
However, a scheme is now on foot to put across another advertising cam¬ 
paign similar to the one used in raising the original building funds. From 
such a plan an endowment fund may be secured which can be invested and 
only the interest devoted to the upkeep of the home. The editors don’t 
want to use the home as a hotel, admitting the public indiscriminately. 
So their offers of advertising space will probably be generous. 

Editors of the Missouri Press Association, with no end of beautiful 
sites for the location of a similar clubhouse, would doubtless find it to 
the interest of their association to follow the plan of the Oklahoma press. 
The possession of such a home popularizes the association and creates a 
closer fellowship among the editors. We hope some day in our visits to 
Missouri to have the pleasure of being entertained in such a home. 


108 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


The Journalism of the Future 

Tendencies in American Journalism 

By Wiuiam B. Coever 

General Editorial Manager, the Scripps-Haward Newspapers, Washington, 

D. C. 

It seems to me that the incidents of the very birth of journalism itself 
have been repeated over and over in the life and death of journals since 
Nathaniel Butter on May 23, 1622, brought from his press in London the 
first copy of his Weekly News. 

In the beginning those in authority did not want newspapers to be 
printed and for a hundred years they did their level best to make the 
printing of newspapers difficult—at first by straight-out prohibition, next 
by oppressive taxation and lastly by strict and narrow limitations. 

Infant mortality among newspapers in the early days was extremely 
high. This is still a characteristic of the race. Newspapers, like men, ap¬ 
pear to be of few days and full of trouble. 

When the powers-that-be finally understood that the newspaper was 
an inevitable thing, they converted what appeared to be an ordinary and 
natural right into a privilege, and permitted newspapers to be published only 
“by authority”. 

So when we look back to the beginnings of our profession, we get 
about the same shock that the prim New England spinster gets when she 
goes to the Boston Library and looks up the family tree. She not in¬ 
frequently finds that her revered ancestors bred a particularly sturdy line 
because only those survived who were hardy and agile enough to keep 
out of range of His Majesty’s sloops-of-war, out of the clutches of the 
Coast Guard, or two jumps ahead of the sheriff. 

We find that our profession had no different beginning than the other 
learned professions—law, medicine, science (especially chemistry and as¬ 
tronomy). Yes, and the primitive priesthood. All these, and we ourselves, 
in the beginning, were panderers to the king and helped him to rule and 
tax the people by either filling them with fables, fright and awe, or play¬ 
ing upon their ignorance. We taffied the king, too. 

But the permission of the publication of journals even “by authority”, 
in the current phrase, spilled the beans, because very early there appeared 
in all professions, but especially in journalism, those adventurous souls 
who dared to think and speak and write and print not “by authority”. In 
journalism it was found that printing “by authority” bred an appetite in 
the public for reading—an appetite which has continually grown more and 
more insatiable until public appetite or public opinion has ever encouraged 
rebel journalists to venture an independent or personal press. That is 


News and the Newspaper 


109 


where the infant mortality runs high. But always a few survived for a 
time. The tendency of the survivors seems to have been to drift insensibly 
into the same class and condition as the orthodox journals, printed “by 
authority” and subsisting upon the crumbs from the tables of the rulers 
and of the rich. And this condition seems always to operate against longev¬ 
ity and to result in decay and death. 

So history repeats. New journals born; many dying early; a few 
surviving for a longer period and during the span of their life creating 
an appetite for reading which makes for the birth of still newer journals 
to pass, in turn, through the same cycle. 

In America the first newspaper was Publick Occurences, published 
by Benjamin Harris in Boston in 1690. Its span of life began and ended 
with its first issue on September 25. The colonial authorities suppressed 
it and Harris went back to the operation of his restaurant. 

Harris, by the way, was but recently out of an English jail because 
he had been trying to print journals not “by authority” in London. His 
first American paper was printed on three pages of a folded sheet, leaving 
the last page blank. There were two columns to a page and each page 
was 11x7 inches. The blank page apparently was the only one that was not 
objectionable to the authorities. 

Five years later Harris was back in London reviving his newspaper 
that had been suppressed fourteen years before. 

The second American newspaper was published in 1704 “by authority” 
and carried nothing that would offend the powers that be. John Campbell 
was its proprietor and editor and enjoyed a sort of monopoly because he 
was made postmaster. 

For the next sixty years or so the newspapers in the Colonies traveled 
pretty close to the heel of authority and in a great many instances the 
job of postmaster ran along with the job of editor and publisher. Even 
our beloved Benjamin Franklin found the lack of the postmastership such 
a handicap that he astutely and successfully set out to accumulate the job 
for himself and things went much better for him thereafter. 

The chap who started the paper that Franklin bought, not having the 
postmastership nor very many advertisers, combined publishing his paper 
with the operation of a department store (in those days called a general 
store) in Philadelphia. He used his paper to advertise his store and his 
advertisements show that he sold everything from beaver hats to pickled 
sturgeon. But even so, starting in 1728, he attained only thirty-nine issues 
counting one out for the week that he was in jail for debt. Then Franklin 
bought him out. 

Ben substituted a print shop for the department store and ran a strong 
editorial campaign for paper money. It was so successful that the Penn¬ 
sylvania legislature authorized the issue of paper money and then Ben 
transferred his campaign to New Jersey and the Jersey legislature fell in 


110 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


line. Whereupon Ben got the contract for printing the paper money in 
both colonies, and we have his word for it that it was a great blessing to 
colonists. 

In 1770 Isaiah Thomas, in Boston, launched the Massachusetts Spy 
which, he said in his prospectus, was “calculated to obtain subscriptions 
from mechanics and other classes of people who had not much time to 
spare from business.” Isaiah lasted three months. He started out on a 
free distribution basis, three issues a week. And the sheriff got him. 

The next year he tried it again, using the same name and the same gen¬ 
eral idea, except that he eliminated the free distribution idea this time. 

The publishing of a paper calculated to “obtain subscriptions from 
mechanics” and such, shocked the authorities, horrified the respectable 
and conservative “by authority” journalists of the day. But within two 
years, Thomas had the largest circulation in New England and was getting 
on fine when the British army moved into Boston. Isaiah moved his press 
and his type to Worcester but could not take his subscribers with him. 

In the troubulous years just preceding and during the Revolutionary 
War, the Whig papers all became independent in tone but were still to a 
degree controlled by the powers who organized and kept up the fight for 
independence. The Tory papers flourished in territories occupied by the 
British and after the war either changed their spots or died. 

The period of the Confederation and the struggle over the writing 
and adopting of the Constitution, saw the small beginnings of political 
parties* and the struggle of giants for political power and leadership. The 
press, no longer united by peril and patriotism, championed political lead¬ 
ers and groups. The statesmen of these days secretly contributed to the 
purses of faithful editors and more secretly to the columns of his paper. 
It was not until Jackson’s time that the newspaper was openly avowed 
as a political aide and stainless statesmen—even presidents—might write for 
the press without soiling white fingers. 

The golden text in politics in those days was “To the Victor Belongs 
the Spoils.” The editors got theirs! And then the Senate announced that 
Jackson need send the names of no more “scribblers” to them for con¬ 
firmation. Among others they turned down Editor Isaac Hill. Jackson 
and the editors got busy, and after the next election Hill marched into 
the Senate and was sworn in as the new Democratic senator from New 
Hampshire. He was the first of our tribe to be a senator and I don’t 
know which, if either, of us should feel badly. 

Meantime the 7-by-ll page of Benjamin Harris had grown to 24-by-35 
in 1727 and 30-by-35 a century later. Here was, indeed, a blanket sheet. 
Dry, dull, heavy news, and ponderous, partisan political editorials with a 
great preponderance of equally dull advertisements, these papers, selling 
at six cents each, had fallen into a state of fat indolence. With small 
circulations’they fed on public printing and private gratuities. 


News and the Newspaper 


111 


Then came the penny press. The New York Sun came first. When 
Benjamin H. Day brought it out, September 3, 1833, it had three ten-inch 
columns to the page and only four pages, as compared with the 30-by-35- 
inch pages of the “respectable sixpennies.” It was independent, popular 
and daring. Circulation boomed and other little penny papers—the Her¬ 
ald, Tribune, World and Times—made their appearance. The conservative 
six-penny ancients shriveled. 

The penny idea—independence and all—swept north to New England 
and south to Philadelphia and Baltimore. 

With the penny press came the Greeleys, the Danas, the Bennetts, and 
the rest. Journalism became intensely personal and tremendously inde¬ 
pendent. Great newspapers were built around the genius of a great—or 
at least a bold, ingenious and forceful—man, who as editor and owner, 
dominated the whole show. Only occasionally did a newspaper outlive its 
creator and seldom was it possible, by sale, to transfer much of a news¬ 
paper property from one editor-publisher to another. It remained for 
Greeley in 1846 to apply the principles of the corporation to newspaper 
ownership. He took his associates into “association” as owners of shares 
or undivided parts of the property. Corporations created by law were 
not then known. 

Hudson, the journalistic historian of the day, denounced this “radical” 
tendency as rank socialism borrowed from France as a part of the danger¬ 
ous (and doubtless bolshevik) doctrines of the French, which looked toward 
a “system of division of labor and to bring into active use the savings of 
men of small means.” This seems to me to be about the only really 
new thing in journalistic anatomy. Developed into the corporation, this 
ownership later substituted the impersonal shareholder and the salaried 
editor and business manager for the owner-editor. Newspapers could be 
built around a property instead of around a man. That was a new tendency 
which still exists. 

Then came the Civil War. Newsprint went to nine cents a pound and 
the penny papers raised their subscription rates. Many papers died but 
those that lived rolled in money. The excitement of the war kept circula¬ 
tions up but after the war subscription prices stayed up and circulations 
went down. 

Again there was a great, unsatisfied popular demand. Again the 
newspapers—-almost without exception—had become fiercely partisan in aid 
of political or financial interests. So by 1870 a new penny press appeared, 
this time in the West—in Chicago and Detroit first. Followed many 
deaths among the ancients and an amazing growth of one-cent, inde¬ 
pendent, popular newspapers. The ancients only escaped by meeting the 
young giants in the matter of price and more or less liberalism in policy. 

Now came another era of advertising and then came the World War. 


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University of Missouri Bulletin 


Newsprint went up; circulation rates went up; advertising rates went up; 
pages were multiplied—and there we are today. 

Tendencies in American journalism? 

Isn’t the tendency in all living, growing things to be born, to grow, 
to decay and to die—always leaving a new generation to take up the 
endless procession from cradle to grave? 

Tendencies in American journalism? 

Well, the other day I picked up a paper—formerly a one-cent paper 
and carrying a declaration that it was “independent” and a “people’s” 
paper. A big box on page one said “The Daily Blank’s Policies Protect 
You.” Later I learned that the protective policies referred to were not 
editorial policies but insurance policies intended to stimulate circulation. 

In reading what newspapers say of themselves, especially in adver¬ 
tisements in trade papers, I notice a tendency more and more to empha¬ 
size the number of lines of advertisements carried rather than the number 
of readers served. And it may be that there is a tendency to publish news¬ 
papers in the interests of advertisers who want to sell something rather 
than in the interests of readers who want to know something. If that is 
.actually a tendency of today it is a sympton of disease. It is pathological. 

Being assigned, by himself, to write a piece on “The Tendencies of 
the Human Race,” Shakespeare wrote his Seven Ages of Man. 

Let us see if the life of a newspaper does not fit fairly into the poet’s 
seven periods: 

At first the infant 

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. 

Those of you who have stood by at the first day’s publication of a 
baby newspaper will agree that that is a pretty good description of the 
first age of a newspaper. 

And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel 
And his shining morning face, creeping like a snail 
Unwillingly to school. 

So the baby newspaper, if it did survive the second summer, having 
gotten its little stomach settled and having eased off on the mewling stuff, 
enters upon the boyhood stage. It is going to the School of Experience. 
It is too big by now to command the pity and sympathy to which it was 
entitled as an infant, but, like a boy, it takes advantage of the fact that 
it is not big enough and old enough to be held accountable for its whin¬ 
ing. I suppose the line, “creeping like a snail,” means the ingrained reluc¬ 
tance of a newspaper in its earlier age to go to press on time. 

These are the childhood years when the newspaper is likely to be noisy 
and rude and unmannerly. To be, generally, a little rowdy. The excep¬ 
tion, of course, is the flaxen-haired, blue-eyed little angel, who never, never 
tells a lie or gets its hands dirty. As between the mollycoddle and the 
rowdy, give me the rowdy. For he, however unwillingly, is learning in 
the School of Experience where, if he has red blood enough to be a 


News and the Newspaper 


113 


rowdy, he will be able to survive the polishing process which will prepare 
him for his next and quite interesting age, when, according to Shakes¬ 
peare: 

And then the lover, 

Sighing like a furnace, with a woful ballad 
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. 

Here is the newspaper with the down beginning to show on its upper 
lip and its voice beginning to seek the lower registers—cracking occasion¬ 
ally—turned lover and “sighing like a furnace” as it woos its necessary 
mate. 

There are always two of these gals. One is a coy miss, shy and bash¬ 
ful, but very, very canny. The lover “sighing like a furnace” will make 
small progress with this girl unless she knows all the time that his inten¬ 
tions are honorable and that he is a he-man. This girl’s name is Circula¬ 
tion. 

The other girl is a vamp. She is all for the jazz. She will have no 
dealings with our young lover unless she is perfectly certain that she will 
get the big end of the bargain. She won’t stand by him in adversity. 
She won’t nurse him when he is sick. I am not saying anything against 
this girl, except that she is not exactly of a generous disposition. Her 
name is Advertising Copy—call her Addie for short. 

It is at this point in life that many newspapers wreck promising careers 
by electing to lead Miss Circulation to the altar (thereby thinking they 
have her tied for life), while their real affections are given to the other 
girl—Addie. And the more the newspaper galivants around with his 
mistress the more certain it is that his jealous wife, Circulation, will effect 
a separation. And when she does separate—the alimony is something 
awful. 

Well, if the newspaper gets through this perilous point in its career, 
it finds itself happily married to Circulation, who, on her part, fulfills her 
duty and provides him with a plenteous progeny, while the vamp girl is 
what we used to call the “hired girl” and now call the “maid”. She is 
out in the kitchen preparing nourishing food for Mamma Circulation and 
all the little Circulations. Then everything is fine, and our hero, thinking 
pretty well of himself, passes to Shakespeare’s fourth estate, which is 
described 

Then a soldier, 

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard; 

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, 

Seeking the bubble reputation 
Even in the cannon’s mouth. 

And here you have the newspaper in the prime of young manhood, in¬ 
clined perhaps to be sudden and quick in quarrel, though in most cases 
hot his own quarrel but rather the quarrel of his community and of his 
own fellow citizens, and jealous of the honor and integrity of his town. 
This is the period and these are the years that decent living, courage, 


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University of Missouri Bulletin 


honesty, temperance, charity and loyalty will prolong, almost indefinitely. 
And these are the years when the newspaper pays back, or should pay 
back, to its suffering fellow citizens, for the inconvenience and the bother 
that it has inflicted upon the community during those years it has been 
“mewling and puking” and “whining” and “sighing like a furnace” and 
being guided, generally, by the selfishness and egotism of extreme youth. 

Four of the seven periods are passed. These are the periods of growth 
and of achievement. So the fifth one: 

And then the justice, 

In fair round belly with good capon lined. 

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, 

Full of wise saws and modern instances. 

There is your newspaper, no longer militant, no longer fighting on 
foot, the comrade and equal of his fellow citizens, but with “fair round 
belly” lined with dividends. Plant all paid for, money in the bank. Mem¬ 
ber of the best clubs; director in the bank; from the height of his own 
self-esteem, judging his humbler fellow citizens with “eyes severe.” 

“Beard of formal cut”—some of the jazz gone out of the make-up. 
Getting sobered down now. A bit conservative, eh? And “full of wise 
saws and modern instances.” The wise saws being its own particular 
inspired-from-on-high judgments, with considerably less emphasis laid on 
“modern instances,” which back in the second, third and fourth periods 
of the newspaper’s life, were the much-prized but now vulgar news items. 

Well, that can’t last. Growth is ended. The decline begins. The 
wife, Circulation, is either dead or growing extremely feeble and all the 
little Circulations have married and left home. Addie, no longer a vamp, 
thin and feeble, only works a few days at a time and the meals she cooks 
are not nourishing. Which, of course, brings us to Shakespeare’s sixth 
age, described thus: 

The lean and slipper’d pantaloon, 

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; 

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide 
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, 

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes 
And whistles in his sound. 

Fean, hungry, spindle-shanked and too small for his socks—that means 
the fine big building and the great plant are too big for the dwindling 
product. The lusty voice of former days turned to “a childish treble” 
which commands neither attention nor respect but which, in the nature of 
a querulous whine, annoys the neighbors and becomes a public nuisance. 
And the burden of the old man’s plaint is that “things are not as they 
used to be.” 

These years are few. For the descent once started is rapid, and, none 
too soon for the comfort of the poor old man and for the pleasure of the 


News and the Newspaper 


115 


community, the newspaper slips swiftly and unnoticed into the seventh 
stage, which is the 

East scene of all, 

That ends this strange eventful history, 

Is second childishness and mere oblivion, 

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. 

One more job for the undertaker. Eyes too dim to see injustice or 
oppression; no teeth to bite into the problem of the day; no taste where¬ 
with to savor the lust of battle and the joy of victory. “Sans everything.” 

And now come the lawyers with their green bags to advise the execu¬ 
tors or the trustees how best to lay away the ancient ashes. 

That is enough. The tendency of American journalism is to live and 
to die, to love, to hate, to serve and to betray, to seek glory, wealth and 
fame, to be heroic and to be cowardly; to be good and to be bad and to 
prepare the way for another generation not much better; not much worse 
but just like human beings—just folks. 

And just as we love folks in the mass and like or hate them as in¬ 
dividuals, we like or dislike individual newspapers but love them in the 
mass and devote our lives to their service. And if we choose our masters 
well there is no more honorable service under the sun. If our paper’s 
purpose is the public service, we become the servants of our fellow man. 
We prosper and our papers live. Truly that is a place of honor. 

The Making of a Newspaper 

By Louis Wiley 

Business Manager, the New York Times 

In an address before the American Newspaper Publishers’ Associa¬ 
tion in New York last month, Senator Pepper of Pennsylvania called the 
newspaper “the tongue of the world.” “Listen to this tongue,” he said, 
“and you will know the world’s sayings and doings. If you are taking 
life seriously, this knowledge is an essential part of your equipment for 
the day’s work.” The Senator likened newspaper publishers to nerve 
centres which control the tongue’s action, giving them unbounded oppor¬ 
tunity and unlimited influence. He said the newspapers’ interpretation of 
the world is accepted as final by millions of people, and therefore the most 
serious task of the tongue controller—that is, the publisher—is so to talk 
as to preserve a right relation between people and events, to speak things 
accordant with America’s devotion to peace and justice as well as to lib¬ 
erty and independence. 

The character of American newspapers, their standards of honor 
and their conception of responsibility to the public are notably high. 

The publications which lead, those which exert the greatest influence, 
those most widely read, the most prosperous, are, as a rule, the newspapers 


116 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


which live up to the highest standards of ethics. Their ambition is to 
comment upon the news with fairness and honesty, not to subordinate 
principle to expediency; to render public service and place before their 
readers that which will not debase, corrupt, deceive, offend or exercise a 
malign influence on the community. 

As semipublic institutions, newspapers perform an important func¬ 
tion. While it is charged by some critics that they are controlled by capi¬ 
talists, by this or that party or interest, the impartial investigator will find 
the desire to serve the public is a fundamental part of the newspaper call¬ 
ing. 

In our civilization newspapers are indispensable. Every phase of 
world activity has multiplied so rapidly in recent years that only readers 
of newspapers can keep pace with the march of events. It would be diffi¬ 
cult, if not impossible, to maintain present-day international relations, 
business, transportation and social life without newspapers. They are the 
great channels of information of all human activities. 

In the making of a newspaper man, quite as important as the making 
of a newspaper, I would lay special emphasis on the cultivation of the 
judicial temper. Whether you find yourselves in editorial chairs or in 
reportorial work, be actuated by the spirit of truth. Sift the facts, sep¬ 
arate the wheat from the chaff. Sacrifice everything to actuality. Do not 
be tempted from the narrow way to dally with the temptations that appeal 
to the imagination. Be eloquent, stirring, dramatic, witty, if you can, 
but by all means be truthful. 

Your readers, while they may admire your gifts, look for the news, 
which must be printed in terse, vigorous language, without exaggeration. 
Accuracy is more to the point that unfounded sensationalism or rhetorical 
flights. 

A real newspaper man must study human nature. Pope has told us 
that the proper study of mankind is man. The harmonies of our common 
nature, the discords, the variable and various qualities that combine to 
make statesmen and politicians, the underlying currents which place some 
men in the forefront and force others to the rear, may well occupy some 
of your thoughts. 

A glance at the books on journalism published by the University of 
Missouri brings to mind the great range of knowledge required by the 
modern journalist—not necessarily a full, exact, and scholarly knowledge, 
but a familiarity with knowledge in general, and an intimate acquaintance 
with some sections of learning. 

For example, the editor must be a lawyer, not in the technical sense, 
but in a practical and useful manner, with particular insight into libel, 
slander, the rights of speech, municipal law and similar subjects. There 
could be no better brief introduction to this subject than Rome G. Brown’s 
“Some Points on the Law of the Press” and Mr. Lehmann’s “The Law and 


News and the Newspaper 


117 


the Newspaper,” issued by your university. The editor’s law must be 
positive as well as negative; he must know not only what to avoid, but 
be able to guide the public mind in reference to needed laws and those 
already on the statute book. 

Solomon Bulkley, of the Springfield Republican, in his book “People 
and Politics,” tells of close acquaintance with a long line of eminent men, 
intimate knowledge of stirring events and a share in the shaping of im¬ 
portant issues. Journalism offers a contact with contemporary life in 
many spheres of endeavor not possible through any other channel. 

The opportunities which newspaper men- frequently enjoy of close 
relations with men in public life, and the confidences which are theirs, 
are revealed in a new volume of reminiscences by H. H. Kohlsaat, former 
publisher of the Chicago Inter-Ocean and the Chicago Herald, with the 
title “From McKinley to Harding.” 

Other books recommended to the student are Melville E. Stone’s 
reminiscences, J. T. Buckingham’s account of early Boston journalism, 
and the autobiographies of Horace Greeley, Thurlow Weed and Henry 
Watterson. 

In more than two hundred colleges and universities of the United 
States courses are given in journalism. There is an ever-increasing de¬ 
mand for training in the fundamentals of newspaper making. For the 
most part, these courses are in charge of practical newspaper workers, 
their experience on the staffs of newspapers ranging from five to thirty 
years or more. 

Many a daily newspaper is issued by the department. Newspapers 
in the cities and towns where some of these colleges are located have 
agreed to send members of classes in journalism on regular reportorial 
assignments. Occasionally a newspaper is issued for a day entirely by a 
class of students. As these experiments, so far as known, have not placed 
any newspaper in the hands of a receiver, we are safe in assuming that 
they have been successful. 

Students of journalism are encouraged to obtain regular work in 
newspaper offices outside their study hours. Fifty-six per cent of the 
senior class of the Pulitzer School of Journalism at Columbia University, 
New York, have part-time employment. Some are with daily newspapers 
in and about New York; others with magazines and a few with news 
associations and syndicates. 

The School of Journalism of the University of Missouri has taken 
high rank. Its courses of study are wholesome and practical. They in¬ 
clude the fundamentals of the newspaper calling—ideals and ethics, princi¬ 
ples and standards, conduct and guidance, with instruction in the practical 
work of reporting, writing and mechanical production. No other school 
of journalism has issued so many useful pamphlets of value to those pre¬ 
paring for newspaper work and those who are engaged in the profession. 


118 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


Newspaper making is no light and easy road where one may walk 
without bearing burdens. It is a serious and responsible mission, and, 
even though a highly developed intelligence may soften some of the severe 
work entailed, there will be no period when concentrated effort can safely 
be withdrawn. 

At Washington last month the American Society of Newspaper 
Editors adopted Seven Canons of Journalism, setting forth what might be 
called a summary of ethics for the press. The tone of editorial com¬ 
ment on the canons is varied. Arthur Brisbane, instead of accepting the 
society’s “truth, decency and fairness” as the cardinal principles of jour¬ 
nalism, declares that “fearlessness, energy, originality” are the real cardi¬ 
nals. Another writer suggests that it is too obvious to put on record a 
declaration of preference for virtue rather than vice. 

It cannot be disputed, however, that when editors in conference ac¬ 
claim their adherence to high principles, they strengthen themselves in 
right thinking, help the cause of journalism and point the way to a better 
world in which to live. 

The canons announced mean that a newspaper’s responsibility is de¬ 
termined by the use it makes of the public attention it receives; that a 
newspaper must have freedom to discuss everything not forbidden by 
the law; that to promote a private interest against the general welfare is 
wrong; and that news communications from private sources should be 
verified elsewhere and their origin published. 

Unfairness in editorial political writing, or in the news sections must 
be avoided; only truth must prevail, even in headlines; and news reports 
should be free from any bias or opinion. 

A newspaper must have a conscience when articles threaten reputa¬ 
tion or moral character; the accused has rights and must be allowed to 
defend himself. 

The invasion of private rights on behalf of alleged public rights; the 
publishing of private statements only with permission, and the prompt 
correction of errors are items in newspaper ethics which cannot be disre¬ 
garded. 

Lastly, the standard of decency, which prevents a newspaper from 
publishing details of vice and other objectionable matters to the public 
detriment, is one to be upheld, so that an avowedly high moral purpose 
is not besmirched by the presence of morbid stories and incentives to evil. 

Take any city in which several daily newspapers are published. With 
some notable exceptions, the same news is sent to each by cable and tele¬ 
graph, yet how differently it is presented. Some newspapers are careful 
in presenting dignified and decorous captions, while others are sensational 
or flippant. The difference may be due to personal equation or it may 
be a matter of business. It is the variety in methods that attracts the 
variety of reader, and it is certain that the conservative newspaper, if it 


News and the Newspaper 


119 


is honest, impartial and enterprising, with a due respect for its readers, 
will more often find success than the newspaper which caters to the 
frivolous and thoughtless. 

The responsibility of a newspaper for the presentation to its readers 
of advertisements which tell the truth without exaggeration is as great 
as the obligation which governs the publication of news. There was a 
time when a newspaper would print almost any advertisement offered for 
publication. There are some newspapers that do so now, but not many. 
No newspaper has a right to print an advertisement which makes state¬ 
ments intended to deceive those who are inexperienced, lacking in educa¬ 
tion or discernment, or from which persons may draw an erroneous in¬ 
ference. 

Newspapers which exercise the greatest care in the scrutiny and cen¬ 
sorship of advertising have found that the purchasing power of their 
columns increases in ratio to the censorship exercised. Readers of a 
newspaper which recognizes its responsibility for the presentation of ad¬ 
vertising, without misrepresentation and extravagant claims, place a con¬ 
fidence in the newspaper they read which is extended to the advertiser 
and reflected in profitable business both to newspaper and advertiser. 

Radio broadcasting will never take the place of newspapers. The 
newspaper can be read any time. We absorb such information as we de¬ 
sire from its columns when we are so inclined. If we miss a point we 
can go back to it. But if you desire entertainment or news by radio, you 
must take what is provided at the hour scheduled, not at the time and 
place you prefer and there can be no relistening to or reselection of radio 
transmitted news. You must seek the radio, but the newspaper comes to 
you. 

Dissemination of knowledge by radio will be in a new field. It will 
satisfy a demand that newspapers can not fill and there will be room for 
the development of both. Radio transmission of news should tend to 
stimulate interest in newspapers and increase their sales. 

Radio will be a most effective agent in stemming the drift of people 
from the country to the cities. Country life has always had a certain 
amount of dullness in it, owing to the lack of entertainment. The radio 
set gives the news, the music, the drama and the talk to the whole country¬ 
side; so that in a few years it will make no difference where a man lives. 
He will be able to work anywhere, and yet know and hear what is going 
on in the chief centres of activity. Thus, the day may not be far distant 
when, instead of crowding into an ill-ventilated opera house as the one 
place where some Caruso may be heard, a million people will not only 
listen in their homes, but advances in science enable them to see the stage 
as well as hear the voice of the operatic star. 

Radio has come to stay. It is not a passing phase, and must be treated 
seriously, for its possibilities are numerous and important. Already I can 


120 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


visualize the time when all nations will listen to announcements of inter¬ 
national consequence from the chief capitals: Tokio, Paris, Berlin, Rome, 
Moscow, London. A quarter of a century from now Washington may 
announce arrangements for broadcasting university courses in journalism 
open to all the world. I predict that within two or three hundred years 
the use of radio will have brought about a universal language; and what¬ 
ever newspapers exist in those days will be printed in that tongue. 

Newspapers should take a favorable attitude toward radio, for many 
reasons. Broadcasting is now largely a neighborhood undertaking, fre¬ 
quently a very large neighborhood. People are able to get together and 
think of the same thing, in such groups as their preferences dictate. We 
are gregarious creatures, and radio as well as motion picture entertain¬ 
ments meet the fundamental human desire to get into touch with others. 

Radio represents a people’s movement. Broadcasting has the nature 
of great university extension courses and it is already an educational force 
of tremendous power. 

Thousands of youths who have made their own receiving sets will 
grow up in a scientific atmosphere, and no development of the apparatus 
or extension of service will be foreign to them. The editor, taking a wider 
and deeper interest, cannot afford to ignore a factor which tends to unite 
the people of this country, and which brings all of them into touch with 
the wide world across the seas. 

What makes a newspaper great and, in the highest sense, successful? 
The foundation is plainly the confidence of its readers, the respect of 
the community to which it appeals. It comes of principles clearly for¬ 
mulated and unswervingly adhered to; of ideals religiously cherished and 
never abandoned. It calls for many renunciations. When guided by 
such a creed, when conviction goes every day into its making, and when 
to all these qualities, illuminating and vitalizing them, brains are added, 
the newspaper that is the product of this blending will inevitably enjoy 
the confidence, the respect and the support of the community to which 
it appeals. 


News and the Newspaper 


121 


The Press and Our Oriental Relations 

By Poui/tne;y Bigexow, M. A., F. R. G. S. 

Honorary Professor in the Bcole Coloniale, Paris, and Former Professor 
of National Expansion in the Boston University Lazv School . 

I am here as a journalist who has made a specialty of travel and 
historical research. This may sound personal; but yours must be the re¬ 
sponsibility, for it is you who have made the world think me important, 
it is you who have called me to this banquet, it is your fault if my words 
are other than you had reason to expect. 

Journalism is referred to as the bulwark of our liberty—the keystone 
in our temple of democracy. Our newspaper proprietors persistently ad¬ 
vertise themselves as public benefactors who are all arch patriots and 
earnest seekers after the truth. Those who question such soothing state¬ 
ments are many and are always in the wrong, because no one would care 
to print such heterodox views in any American paper. Journalism can be 
good. It can be hard. It may be a virtue and it may be a vice. 

Just now the majesty of our federal Congress is being viciously 
undermined by a section of the American press which seeks war between 
Japan and this country. This press enjoys immunity whilst daily utter¬ 
ing falsehoods and libels aimed at our nearest neighbor in the Pacific; 
and the people have no power to compel such papers to publish the truth, 
even after it has been officially proclaimed on the highest authority. A 
half-dozen rich men control the most important organs of public opinion 
west of the Rocky Mountains and by that one fact are able to exert politi¬ 
cal pressure so strong that already California is treating our treaty with 
Japan as merely another scrap of paper. 

In the past we denounced monarchs because we believed that wars 
were made for purely personal or dynastic reasons. Now that monarchy 
has been constitutionally moderated—and momentarily suppressed in Rus¬ 
sia, Austria and Germany—we should pause whilst noting that the crowns 
which yesterday graced the heads of anointed sovereigns are today worn 
by the despots of our latter-day democracy whose will is enforced by a 
syndicate of press plutocrats. 

We made war on Spain in 1898. No king and no President wished 
that war. But the proprietor of an American journalistic syndicate in¬ 
flamed public sentiment so persistently and so poisonously that we finally 
invaded Cuba, saddled ourselves with far-away colonies and with an in¬ 
crease of religious and racial problems. 

The war with Spain grew out of two charges, both of them unfounded: 
first, that Spain blew up the Maine; second, that Senora Cisnero had been 
improperly handled by a Spanish officer. We know now that no one 


122 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


knows how the Maine exploded; and we of the newspaper craft know 
equally that the Cisnero story was an artfully engineered fake which 
fired the public sentiment much as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had operated 
in the northern states prior to the Civil War. 

If there’s glory in getting people to go out and murder one another, 
then should we enlarge our Hall of Fame in order to include those news¬ 
paper nabobs who keep themselves at a safe distance from the firing line 
whilst their tame editors urge on the young and the brave and the credu¬ 
lously ideal youngsters to go forth to a glorious death. 

Japan is dear to me, because I know the country from having been 
a shipwrecked sailor on her coast. Her people are dear to me because I 
have Japanese friendships half a century old. Five times have I cruised 
in Far Eastern seas, solely for study and never in order to make more 
money. Japanese gentlemen and their wives have been guests in my 
American home and also in the homes of my friends, whilst my wife and 
myself have been received in Japanese homes as guests. This does not 
mean that I have not much to learn about Japan, but so have I much to 
learn about every other country, including my own. 

There are few surprises for him who has carefully studied history, 
but the superficial traveler is ever stumbling upon adventures and re¬ 
tailing sensational tales. 

Manchuria, Korea, Formosa—these were synonymous with barba¬ 
rism, cruelty and political chaos when first I sailed those waters in 1875 
and 1876. They remained a social savagery until the flag of Japan waved 
over Dairen, Seoul, Port Arthur and Taihoku. Today the only portion 
of Eastern Asia safe for commerce and pleasure travel is that very 
small one where a Japanese policeman is the symbol of law, of order, of 
good roads, of public hygiene and of education. 

China has proved hopelessly unequal to the task of holding together 
her vast empire, and Russia has failed even more lamentably. When first 
I visited Peking, forty-seven years ago, not only was there not one mile 
of railway in the empire, but not even that much of macadam between the 
coast and the Manchu capital. Two English commissioners had just been 
murdered whilst bearing official passes, and my own permit was given 
on condition that I hold no communication with rebel forces who had 
already laid waste hundreds of towns and diminished the population by 
more than ten millions. I refer to the Tai Pings. 

In 1921 I wanted to visit Mongolia and Eastern Siberia—but even 
Harbin was then dominated by plundering guerilla bands and nowhere was 
there civilized progress outside of zones patrolled by Japanese police. 

We as a nation have been for now some time acting toward Japan 
much as France and England acted officially toward the United States 
during our Civil War. England today is our friend and ally, but we have 
not forgotten that from 1860 to 1865 her chief newspapers, her leading 


News and the Newspaper 


123 


politicians did little to disguise their hope that we would soon cease to be 
one united people. 

Japan also is our friend and ally. She fought for us during the 
Great War, she cleared the Pacific of German ships, she silenced the great 
forts of Tsing Tao; and she enabled the navies of England and the United 
States to concentrate all their power in Atlantic waters. Japanese resi¬ 
dents of the United States served under the Stars and Stripes and gave 
noblest expression to their loyalty ; for what expression can be stronger 
than offering one’s life in the cause of one’s adopted country. 

The Japanese is brave and he is moral and he is honest and above all 
he is courteous—of a courtesy that has its roots in kindliness of heart. 

No nation has ever sprung to arms so swiftly and enthusiastically as 
Japan during her last three wars, and I need not recall to this generation 
that a great war is a supreme test of honesty and industrial efficiency in 
a people. Japan has stood this test more perfectly than any other nation 
with the possible exception of Prussia in 1870. 

Morality in the highest sense of Roman virtus finds its finest expression 
in Japan. A pure-minded woman may walk the streets of Tokio day or 
night without being offended as she assuredly would be in those of New 
York or Chicago where painted prostitutes prowl with impunity. There 
are doubtless women in Japan as elsewhere who ply a shameful commerce 
but at least they do not flaunt their unhallowed wares in avenues where 
modest women are compelled to pay visits or go shopping. 

We would brand with infamy a foreigner who should come to the 
United States and write a book made up of his life in a New York brothel. 
Yet an American writer has made much money by publishing a novel in 
which he advertises the interesting fact that he knows of Japanese family 
life mainly what he has gleaned through residence in a house of ill fame. 

I’ve never known Japanese in America seeking the acquaintance of 
improper women nor have I ever, in Japan, been entertained by indecencies 
in books, pictures or theatrical shows. This whole matter is puerile from 
the standpoint of one who travels and reads; yet it is important from the 
number of Americans who persistently repeat the stale and empty accusa¬ 
tion. Immoral people do not have large and happy families. 

Japanese honesty compares well with our own or that of any European 
country. I’ve never been cheated in any shop or hotel of Japan, nor have 
I ever locked my bedroom door nor any of my baggage whilst under the 
Japanese flag. California papers repeat over and over again that Japan 
is dishonest to such a deplorable extent that the banks of Dai Nippon 
employ Chinese tellers to the exclusion of their own countrymen. 

This is not the truth! 

There is not a Chinese teller in any Japanese bank. I have made a 
diligent search for Chinese tellers not only in Japan but in Formosa, Shan¬ 
tung and Korea. The tale is absurd—j ust as absurd as though a foreigner 


124 


University of Missouri Bulletin 


should insist that American banks had women clerks because men could 
not be trusted. 

Yet such is the power of our syndicate of nabobs in the newspaper 
business that should I visit California twenty years hence I'm sure that 
the first man who met me at the hotel would inform me that all Japanese 
are immoral—all dishonest—and that America was being ruined by their 
presence in our virtuous midst. 

People who are clean and courteous; industrious, intelligent and law 
abiding; such people are welcome where immigration laws are wise. 
Moreover, such people become dangerous when treated unfairly. 

We place no effective barriers against Africans and Mexicans who 
drift in over the Rio Grande or in fishing craft from the West Indies. We 
have more than a million of Asiatics in the city of New York whose home 
address was once Jerusalem and whose twin brothers are from Armenia 
and adjacent centers of Semitic interests. We have Sinn Feiners and Bol- 
sheviki throughout our Atlantic seaboard. And not a politician is dis¬ 
turbed. But let a Japanese buy a ranch in Mexico, or an orchard in Cali¬ 
fornia, and the American Senate reverberates with vocal invective against 
the yellow peril. 

And now one final word. War must be, because war has ever been, 
the one distinguishing feature of Christian peoples. Being a good Chris¬ 
tian, I am bound to believe in war—especially in wars which we Christians 
provoke. But although a Christian, I pray for peace now and then. Too 
much peace would be unchristian—would be a blasphemous imitation of 
oriental pacifism. But I plead for a short peace—a truce to war for a 
few years—until 1954, the centennial of Perry's famous treaty with Japan. 

Let us forbid all armed vessels in the Pacific until that memorable 
date. Let us then all unite in a world festival in Tokio to commemorate 
our centennial of Japanese friendship and there lay the foundations of 
another treaty equally beneficent. Japan stands ready to grasp our hand. 
May the Press of America help us in such a cause; for it is the cause of 
world peace. 


THE 

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI 
BULLETIN 

JOURNALISM SERIES 

Edited by 

Robert S. Mann, 

Assistant Professor of Journalism 

As part of the service of the School of Journalism, a series of 
bulletins have been published for distribution among persons inter¬ 
ested. Most of these are now out of print, so that no more copies can 
be distributed, but they may be borrowed from the University Li¬ 
brary by any responsible person upon application to the University 
Librarian. 

The following bulletins are still in print. Copies may be ob¬ 
tained, while they last, by ^application to the Dean of the School of 
Journalism, Jay H. Neff Hall, Columbia, Mo. All are free to residents 
of Missouri, and to newspapers, libraries and educational institutions 
wherever located. To others a small charge is made to cover the cost 
of publication. 

No. 21. Deskbook of the School of Journalism, revised 1920, by 
Robert S. Mann, assistant professor of journalism. 

No. 22. “The Newspaper Man’s Library,” (revised edition), by Claire 
E. Ginsbuig. 

No. 23. “Picture Plates for the Press,” by Herbert W. Smith, as¬ 
sistant professor of advertising. 

No. 24. “Some Points of the Law of the Press,” by Rome G. Brown, 
of the Minneapolis Bar. 

No. 25. “Special Phases of Journalism,” addresses from nine view¬ 
points, delivered at the School of Journalism of the University 
of Missouri. 

No, 26. “The Journalism of China,” by Don D. Patterson, assistant 
professor of journalism. 

No. 27. “Missouri Alumni in Journalism,” a directory of graduates 
and former students of the School of Journalism of the University 
of Missouri, 



































































































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